17th BIEN Congress in Lisbon, Portugal

17th BIEN Congress in Lisbon, Portugal

The 17th BIEN Congress took place in Lisbon, Portugal from the 25th to the 27th of September. The focus of the congress was on “Implementing Basic Income.” The 150 presenters represented 33 countries, with more countries represented in the additional 380 audience members. According to Karl Widerquist, Vice-Chair of BIEN, this may have been the largest BIEN Congress since Brazil in 2010.  The Congress included keynote presentations by BIEN co-founders Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs, in addition to keynote presentations about several Basic Income pilot programs, reflecting the congress’s focus on implementation, and from several political figures who are advocating for Basic Income in their respective countries.

The first day of the congress took place at the Portuguese Parliament (Assembleia da República), and as Standing said: “I am sure I speak for many of the co-founders, and many of them are here, that when we set up BIEN 31 years ago we never anticipated that we would be in a place like this in 2017.” The second and third days were held at ISEG, Lisbon School of Economics and Management, a beautiful venue that used to be a convent (Convento das Inglesinhas, restored by architect Gonçalo Byrne) that has kept many of its original architectural features and now hosts the university’s post-graduate programs.  

 

Evelyn Forget, photo by Luis Gaspar

Starting the keynote session on Basic Income pilot programs, Evelyn Forget’s presentation was about the differences between the narratives attached to several Basic Income experiments. She underlined that different narratives will create different criteria of success. For example, Finland’s narrative is about long-term unemployment and incentivising return to work. In this case, the experiment will be successful if people return to work. Ontario’s narrative is about social justice and a gap in benefits for adults because of the new reality of precarious work and poverty issues. Their goal is to expand the welfare state. Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator’s narrative started out as an utopia put forward by private individuals who wondered what would happen once automation freed people to do what they want. Forget stressed that “context matters” in pilot programs, and she suggested that when we bring together all these shared experiences, we can create newer and richer narratives.

 

After Forget’s insights, there were several presentations about specific pilot programs being developed. Karen Glass, from the experiment in Ontario, Canada, described the pilot program as a type of Negative Income Tax program, since the payments decrease as the recipients start working. The Ontario project applies to households and encompasses individuals aged 18 through 64, who have been residents of the region for one year. The pilot provides a guaranteed annual income of $17,000 dollars per individual and $24,000 per couple, which is 75% of the low income measure. The success criteria are not focused primarily on work incentives, but on recipients’ improved health, reduction in anxiety and the ability to make ends meet. Elizabeth Rhodes from Y Combinator, a seed investment company, talked about the contours of what this private experiment wants to achieve. Y Combinator has already financed a feasibility study in Oakland. and now plans to select 3000 participants who will receive 1000 dollars per month, some for three years and others for five. There is an income cap in the selection and they will be undersampling higher incomes. Presently the program is considering selecting subjects  21 to 40 years in age. The pilot intends to evaluate well being, mental and physical health, social and civic engagement and social networks effects as well as effects in the children of the participants. The research team has been piloting and testing their methods with a smaller group of participants.

photo by Enno Schmidt

Joe Huston spoke about the experience of GiveDirectly in Kenya. GiveDirectly has raised funds privately and has been distributing them to around 100 people, but once the project is fully launched there will be up to 26,000 people receiving some type of cash transfer. The pilot is divided into three groups, one group will receive a monthly payment for 12 years, another for 2 years and yet another will receive a one time cash grant of the same amount. The 100 people who are receiving a monthly Basic Income already have reported on their experiences, and, as Huston says,many have reported they did not reduce their work efforts; instead, many have several projects that need to be completed (such as paying for school and building a house), so they need to work. Others have pulled their Basic Income payments together in something called “table banking” and give a larger sum to each member at a time so that more can be achieved. Giving to individuals as opposed to households has had the emancipatory effects that are often theorized: because each person receives an equal amount of money, it is easier to solve household disputes. Regarding how the money is spent,  Huston says that Basic Income debates seem to oscillate between saying that people will become lazy bums or startup engineers; however, both extremes are inaccurate and do not apply to what is happening in the village so far. Huston explains that when walking from house to house in Kenya one can see a diversity of life choices: “Irene spent some in purchasing a goat for about $12 and kept some of the money as savings. Eric spent most of his money in a fishing net, saved some of the money and bought small fish like anchovies for a snack. Frederick spent most of the money in school fees.” So far, each person used the money as is more adequate in their particular circumstances.

 

Photo by Enno Schmidt

On the political arena there were several important participants. From Germany, Cosima Kern spoke about the new Basic Income single issue party, and explained that since Germany has no direct democracy (in contrast to Switzerland) this is a way to force Basic Income into the political arena. The Basic Income party had almost 100,000 votes in the election that took place on day before the Congress, which Kern said is a good result for a new party. Enno Schmidt talked about the referendum in Switzerland and also underlined that the 23% vote for Basic Income was a great first result, reminding everyone how it took 17 years of discussion in Switzerland for women to have the right to vote. Lena Stark spoke about the new political party in Sweden in the same vein as the German party; they plan to run for elections in September 2018. Ping Xu presented the situation in Taiwan with the help of Tyler Prochazka. Taiwan has the highest housing costs and the lowest birth rates, and would be an ideal site for a full implementation of Basic Income. From Japan, the ex-Minister of Agriculture, Masahiko Yamada, spoke about the importance of Basic Income in his country, which is facing new economic challenges that urgently need to be addressed.

 

Ronnie Cowan, Photo by Luis Gaspar

Finally, the Scottish MP Ronnie Cowan inspired the audience with his privileged viewpoint regarding how politicians tend to operate and the heartfelt way that Scotland is pursuing their Basic Income pilot programs. Mr. Cowan said that politicians rely on experts, but experts and academic often disagree, and politicians need facts and figures, which is why experiments are so important. With pilot schemes, we can monitor outcomes; they can be used to tell if “people are happier, more socially engaged, eating healthier, if kids are doing better at school, we can measure the benefits against the cost.” Mr. Cowan concluded:  “Basic Income really comes alive for me when we consider it’s for everyone. It is not means tested. It is not subject to the disability test. It removes stigma. It creates choice and it’s absolutely dripping in humanity.”

 

Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs, photos by Enno Schmidt and Luis Gaspar

The two main keynote speakers, Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs, also captured the audience’s interest with their presentations. Standing celebrated the 800 year anniversary of The Charter of the Forest, a piece of legislation that was valid for 754 years, only repealed in 1971. Standing argued that the commons defended in The Charter of The Forest have been plundered upon for hundreds of years, and Basic Income is a way to bring back the commons. He defended the position that Basic Income should be seen as a social dividend based in the commons and land tax, not something that will send income tax through the roof. Van Parijs spoke of the right to work and the duty to work. He argued that even though many see Basic Income as an attack on these, it actually facilitates both. Basic Income can organically encourage part-time work and therefore job sharing, thus promoting the right to work. Basic Income can also allow for the duty to work to be expressed in a meaningful way that includes paid and unpaid jobs. According to Van Parijs, the duty to work cannot mean simply doing something for a salary; it should be viewed more widely as a duty to participate in society in a meaningful way. Basic Income can liberate people to participate in such a way by either allowing them to chose paid work that is more meaningful, or by choosing other unpaid useful work. If we eliminate the idea that people have to work in whatever they can to survive, the morality of what one chooses to do will come to the forefront, allowing the duty to work in a more meaningful way to become center stage as far as human activity is concerned.

 

The keynote presentations wrapped up with Eduardo Suplicy from Brazil, ex-Senator and long time defender of Basic Income, and Francisco Louçã, member of the left wing party Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal. There were also many other local Portuguese participants, as well as a slew of media attention related to the congress (which will be discussed in a future Basic Income Newspiece). The congress also included 37 parallel sessions, among others, Malcolm Torry’s presentation on Defining Basic Income, sessions on Degrowth, Digital Economy, Communicating about Basic Income, and many other topics, as well as two films, Christian Todd’s Free Lunch Society and Rena Masuyama’s Film Project, the first fiction film about Basic Income produced in Japan. Summaries of all the sessions provided by the chairs should be available in about one month at the Portuguese Basic Income Site, for now there are papers and presentations and videos of the event available of the site.

 

 

More information:

 

See the program and available Papers and Abstracts for the 17th BIEN Congress here.

See Videos of all the plenary sessions here.

 

GERMANY: Basic Income party Bündnis Grundeinkommen prepares for participation in upcoming election

GERMANY: Basic Income party Bündnis Grundeinkommen prepares for participation in upcoming election

Bündnis Grundeinkommen gathering at Brandenburg gate. Credit to: Enno Schmidt and Bündnis Grundeinkommen

 

The Bündnis Grundeinkommen, Germany’s political party campaigning on the single issue of introducing a basic income in the country, has held an open air event in preparation to participate in their first national election.

 

Hosted together with Kulturimpuls Grundeinkommen eV (a German broadcaster), the event took place on July 29th at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin. There was a celebratory tone to the day with music provided by Kiezkneipenorchester, Juri di Marco and Bertram Burkert, and entertainment in the form of slacklining, by world record slackliner Alexander Schulz. Guest speakers included: Prof. Dr. Sascha Liebermann, Head of Education and Social Change in The Department of Education at Alanus College in Germany, Dr. Liebermann was one of the first advocates of UBI in Germany and adopted the campaign slogan “freedom instead of full employment”; Martin Bohmeyer, a 29 year-old web-developer, who self-imposed a basic-income in his own personal trial in 2014 and is now running an initiative called Mein Grundeinkommen in order to crowd-source for other individuals; Ralph Boes, a sit-in protester in central Berlin, who campaigns and argues for a guaranteed “livable income”; Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumärker, Director for The Department of Economic Policy and Order Theory at The University of Freiburg; Enno Schmidt, who, in 2006 with entrepreneur Daniel Häni founded the Swiss Basic Income Initiative (Initiative Grundeinkommen) in Basel, which, in 2013 submitted 126,000 signatures in favour of the introducing of an unconditional basic income, leading to the UBI referendum in June of 2016; and Susanne Weist, the first chairman of the Bündnis Grundeinkommen, who received attention in 2009 due to her petition to the German Bundestag to introduce a basic income.

 

The press team at Bündnis Grundeinkommen said that “humans need security to thrive” and that “basic income is a secure economic base” which would allow humans to live in a new way, “pursu[ing] the lives they want to live”. The BGE:Open Berlin event was described as “a visual impression of this concept”, with Alexander Schultz’s slacklining performance embodying the concept of “basic income as a permanent earnings floor no one could fall beneath, offering security and personal freedom”.

 

Talking about the possibility of a UBI being introduced to Germany, Susanne Wiest, chair of Bündnis Grundeinkommen, said: “Basic Income may not only be about social security, but also about a better work-life balance and higher [level of] happiness. The days of people being exploited by the market wage would end. If people only work in jobs they enjoy, they would be more passionate about their work. No one would be excluded from society because they can’t find a job”.

 

Cosima Kern, vice chair of Bündnis Grundeinkommen, added: “Maybe the most important change would be a feeling of a shared prosperity, that we are all together in this”.

 

Commenting on the day itself, the speeches and the entertainment, Enno Schmidt stated that it was “amazing to see this UBI performance directly in front of the Brandenburger Tor, the symbol of the capital of Germany”. Regarding the meteoric rise of the party and of its origins, Mr Schmidt described how the co-founder of Bündnis Grundeinkommen Ronald Trzoska conceived of a party for basic income “on the day of the popular vote about the introduction of an UBI in Switzerland”. Although Germany does not have “the right of a people’s initiative, like the Swiss have”, Mr. Trzoska envisioned that a party could be formed within the MMP system at the German Bundestag, and campaign for the single issue of a UBI.

 

Mr. Schmidt stressed that the purpose of the Bündnis Grundeinkommen is “short and clear: unconditional basic income is electable”. It is a tool that means that “the people can do something for their ideal”. He did warn that “many make the mistake of mixing other issues with unconditional basic income and disguising the idea”, rather than focusing on it being an unassailable right, or, as he puts it: “[an] idea [that] is the human being”. There is often, also, too much focus, he says, on the concept of political parties, which are divisive and compartmentalizing. The time for political parties, as he sees it, is over. The “post-party party” of the single issue, such as the Bündnis Grundeinkommen, is more of a democratizing “social movement”, allowing direct participation and ensuring that the “trap” of waiting is avoided and that there is no temptation to “submissive[ly] attempt to participate in old sick forms”. “The party”, he summarized , “is a signal, it is an art form, it is a life platform and allows life for the unconditional basic income”.

 

On September 9th and 10th, German UBI activists met in Göttingen at BGE:open to discuss the political progress of UBI in Germany and worldwide. The elections the Bündnis Grundeinkommen participate in will take place on September 24th, 2017.

 

More information at:

[In English]

Albert Jöerimann, ‘GERMANY: Single-issue political party founded to promote UBI’, Basic Income News, October 5th 2016

Kate McFarland, ‘GERMANY: Basic Income Party Set to Participate in National Elections’, Basic Income News, July 9th 2017

Josh Martin, ‘GERMANY: Michael Bohmeyer Starts Crowdfunding Organization to Finance Individual Basic Incomes’, Basic Income News, August 10th 2014

Barrett Young, ‘GERMANY: Ralph Boes’ Sanction Starvation’, Basic Income News, September 11th 2015

 

[In German]

Grundeinkommen eV Hompage, Grundeinkommen TV

BGE:open air Berlin – #GrundeinkommenIstWählbar, 29.7.2017’, Youtube, August 8th 2017

Prof. Sascha Liebermann Interview, Unternimm Die-zukunft De

Mein Grundeinkommen homepage, Mein-grundeinkommen.de

Wir-Sind-Boes Homepage, Wir-sind-boes.De

Initiative Grundeinkommen Wikipedia page, Wikipedia.Org

Peter Bierl, ‘Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen [Let’s talk about: Unconditional Basic Income]’, Süddeutsche Zeitung De, September 26th 2016

Homepage, ‘BGE: open 17.5 in Göttingen from 9 to 10 September’, Bündnis Grundeinkommen.De

Germany: Interview with German Parliamentary Candidate Felix Coeln

Germany: Interview with German Parliamentary Candidate Felix Coeln

By Jason Burke Murphy

US Basic Income Guarantee Network

Coming up on September 24th, Germany will be holding national parliamentary elections. A new “single-issue-party” will be on the ballot in every state, the “Alliance for Basic Income” (Bundnis Grundeinkommen). If this party gets five percent of the vote or more, they will have five percent or more of votes in the Bundestag.

The party is building on a movement in Germany that has seen steady growth for years. This campaign is inspired by the initiative in Switzerland and the way that movement promoted discussion all over the world.

Germans vote for their district representative and they cast a “second vote”, which determines the percentage a party has in the Bundestag. You will see the word “Zweitstimme” on almost all Basic Income Alliance campaign material.

North American Basic Income activists and scholars got to meet with Felix Coeln, who is a candidate in Germany, at our Congress in New York in 2015. Coeln was then working with the German Pirate Party. He is busy campaigning but took time to answer a few questions.

Campaign banner. “Basic Income Alliance” “Freedom Meets Justice”

Interview

 

Jason Burke Murphy: Why did you decide to join this new political party?

Felix Coeln: I did not join the party. I am an independent candidate on the list for the national parliament. Since I have been a member of the Pirate Party for three years (until August 2015), but needed to withdraw my membership after some terrible internal party decisions. I did not feel like joining another party.

I also felt I could not yet join because the Basic Income Alliance (Bündnis Grundeinkommen) has in its manifesto a paragraph that I cannot agree with under any circumstances. The party will dissolve after introducing a Basic Income in Germany. To me this is absolutely wrong as I believe it is very important to have parliamentarians to pay attention and make sure the laws regarding Basic Income are not corrupted after some while. I also think it would be important to introduce the Basic Income to the whole European Union. Therefore I think it would be crucial to keep the party together even if Basic Income is introduced at least for some more years, maybe ten or twenty.

Felix Coeln

 

But the Basic Income Alliance is willing to accept independent candidates on their election lists. They want to make sure that Basic Income activists can contribute and bring in their experience to the process of introducing the UBI and/or expand the debate around it.

Murphy: What are your chances of getting elected?

Coeln: German election law asks parties to give lists of candidates for each state, then they send people to the Bundestag based on that percentage. I am #6 on the list in North-Rhine Westfalia. This means that if we pass the 5% threshold, I would join the national Parliament, too.

Murphy: What would you consider to be successful in this upcoming election?

Coeln: I already consider the campaign a full success: by now we have more than 40 parties running for parliament. A lot of them propose UBI. But most of those parties do not have a chance to overcome the 5% threshold.

On the other hand, the public debate has already increased. Some of the long-time established parties have also offered to “check out” UBI models as possible political solutions for future trends of digitalization and advanced productivity. To me this is a direct reaction to the founding of the Basic Income Alliance.

Apart from that, if we exceed half of one percent, the party will be refunded for each valid vote. We would get 0.83 € euro each year until the next election.

If we exceed 3% we will gain some significant media attention and the other political parties will make some effort to develop their concepts of UBI. UBI plans are already ready to be presented to the public. I know this, because I have broad contact to members of all parties.

If we exceed 5% we will enter parliament – and I am pretty sure we would gain a lot of (international) attention.

Campaign Banner. “Basic Income is Electable”

Murphy: Felix Coeln, thank you for speaking with us!

 

If you want more information, we have included some links here:
“GERMANY: Basic Income Party Set to Participate in National Elections” by Kate McFarland for Basic Income News.

GERMANY: Basic Income Party Set to Participate in National Elections

(In German) Founding of the party in September 2016
(“https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendungen/zuendfunk/politik-gesellschaft/buendnis-grundeinkommen-ihr-habt-ne-partei-100.html“)

(In German) Interview with the party chairwoman, Susanne Wiest. (Wiest started a petition in December 2008 that instantly crashed the Bundestags-Server.)
(“https://www.zeit.de/2017/22/susanne-wiest-bedingungsloses-grundeinkommen“)

A 1-minute news article on German national television.

(“https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/drehscheibe/drehscheibe-clip-4-516.html“)

A commercial broadcast by Bundnis Grundeinkommen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=can_Zg-QeeE

Netzwerk Grundeinkommen: A Basic Income Earth Network Affiliate in Germany.

NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

Malcolm Torry, Director of the UK-based Citizen’s Income Trust, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, and General Manager of BIEN, has signed a contract with the publisher Palgrave Macmillan to edit An International Handbook of Basic Income.

Torry is currently recruiting authors of each of the book’s chapters (listed below). The publisher has issued the following the call for authors:

Palgrave Macmillan is planning to publish An International Handbook on Basic Income, which it intends to be a definitive guide to the current state of the debate.

The editor, Dr. Malcolm Torry, is seeking chapter authors who will represent the best available scholarship from around the world.

A few of the chapters will be commissioned: but for most of them the editor is seeking expressions of interest.

If you would like to express an interest in writing one or more of the chapters then please contact him at generalmanager@basicincom.org or info@citizensincome.org with a CV and a list of publications on Basic Income. Bids for individual chapters from two or three authors from different parts of the world will be particularly welcome.

Dr. Torry will be at the BIEN Congress in Lisbon from the 25th to the 27th September, and he would very much welcome discussions with prospective authors or groups of authors.

The table of contents is as follows:

Part I: The concept of Basic Income

  1. The definition and characteristics of a Basic Income
  2. The history of Basic Income
  3. The anatomy of a global debate

Part II: The effects of Basic Income

  1. Employment market effects
  2. Social effects
  3. Economic effects
  4. Ecological effects
  5. Gender effects

Part III: Implementation of Basic Income

  1. The anatomy of a Basic Income scheme
  2. The administration of a Basic Income scheme
  3. Costings for Basic Income
  4. The framing of Basic Income
  5. The feasibility of Basic Income
  6. Alternatives to Basic Income
  7. The funding of Basic Income
  8. The implementation of a Basic Income scheme
  9. Objections to Basic Income
  10. An illustrative Basic Income scheme

Part IV: Pilot projects and other experiments

  1. Canada and the USA
  2. Brazil
  3. Iran
  4. Namibia
  5. India
  6. Switzerland
  7. Finland
  8. The Netherlands

Part V: The political economy of Basic Income

  1. Libertarian arguments for Basic Income
  2. Left wing arguments for Basic Income
  3. Neoliberal arguments for Basic Income
  4. Human rights arguments for Basic Income
  5. The justice of Basic Income
  6. The ethics of Basic Income

Blank book photo CC BY 2.0 kate hiscock

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?”

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?”

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, a public policy researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki, has published his paper “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?” in European Review of Labour and Research.

Pulkka was previously employed as part of the research team at Kela, the Finnish Social Insurance Institution, responsible for the design and preparation of the nation’s two-year experiment replacing conditional unemployment benefits with an unconditional basic income.

The Finnish experiment has been the topic of most of his previous published work and presentations related to basic income (including presentations at conferences in Switzerland, Poland, Finland, and Ireland).

Pulkka’s research at the University of Helsinki, including his doctoral dissertation, centers on the implications of the digital economy for labor and public policy.

“A free lunch with robots,” his latest publication on basic income, moves away from focus on the Finnish experiment to explore the latter topic in more general terms:  

The discussion on the possible implications of the digital economy for labour continues unabated. An essential dimension of the discussion is the widely shared view that a basic income could guarantee sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers should technological unemployment and labour market insecurity increase. A budget-neutral basic income has serious limitations as an economic stabilisation grant, but if financing proposals are revised, these limitations can be tackled. Even though guaranteeing sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers does not necessarily require an unconditional universal benefit, it seems clear that traditional activation based on strict means-testing and obligations will not be a strategy flexible enough to guarantee sufficient consumer demand in fluctuating labour markets. An economically sustainable solution might be to reduce means-testing gradually and to study carefully the effects.

The full article is available behind a paywall here.


Reviewed by Russell Ingram.

Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Helen Taylor