by BIEN | Oct 9, 2016 | News
Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE), a regional affiliate of BIEN, has begun to raise funds through the crowdfunding platform Open Collective.
UBIE works to secure the implementation of unconditional basic income across Europe.
The organization formed in 2014 after the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) for Basic Income had, in the previous year, brought together people from 25 countries and collected 300,000 signatures in support of the idea.
Since then, UBIE has worked with regional basic income groups to organise public events in Brussels, Athens, Maribor, Budapest, Maastricht and Hamburg. Its members are currently looking forward to their next meeting in Madrid, 14-16 October which will feature a public roundtable with Spanish, French, Swiss and Scandinavian activists and BIEN co-chair Karl Widerquist. The event concludes, fittingly, on the eve of the UN’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October).
In addition to supporting and exchanging information with regional groups, UBIE is actively engaged in lobbying and research projects. At the moment, UBIE members are writing a response to the EU’s Social Pillar proposals, developing ways to practically implement the Eurodividend first proposed by Philippe van Parijs, gathering interested localities into an EU-wide pilot project, researching the potential impact of basic income on local food systems, and organising to make sure another EU-wide ECI for basic income gains even more support than the last.
Despite having existed for only two years, UBIE was mentioned in a recent report by a research group for the European Parliament as one of the ‘key civil society organisations’ working on basic income in Europe.
So far, UBIE has been run entirely by volunteers working in their spare time. In order to fulfill its ambitions and expand its reach, however, the alliance wants to professionalise some aspects of its work. Money is needed to maintain the ‘back office’ aspects of the alliance, to help activists travel to meetings, to hire interpreters and, eventually, to staff a small office in Brussels.
Open Collective provides a transparent funding platform where contributors can make regular donations and follow how their money is being spent, while organisations can crowdsource a regular and reliable funding stream.
If you would like to support UBIE’s work, please follow this link: https://opencollective.com/ubie
by Kate McFarland | Sep 27, 2016 | News
The third US Basic Income Create-a-thon took place in New Orleans, Louisiana from September 9 to 11. The event was organized and hosted by Scott Santens, and attended by two members of BIEN’s Executive Committee: Karl Widerquist (co-chair) and Kate McFarland (news editor).
One project launched at the create-a-thon was “Basic Income MediaBites”–a database of timestamped videos (e.g. the “most quotable” moments of lectures and interviews about basic income) and images based upon quotes from said videos. Basic Income MediaBites is intended to be an ongoing collaborative project. The database is a shared document to which anyone can contribute.
One of the images created at the create-a-thon, featuring a quote from BIEN cofounder Philippe van Parijs’ TEDxGhent talk
Also at the create-a-thon, Karl completed his article “The Third Wave of the Basic Income Movement“–which, as the abstract states, “puts the current wave of support into this historical context to help understand why the movement is taking off now and how to build on it”.
The first two Basic Income Create-a-thons were held in San Francisco and Los Angeles in November 2015 and April 2016, respectively. The Universal Income Project promotes and assists the convocation of create-a-thons throughout the United States.
For more details about the projects pursued at the New Orleans create-a-thon–and a variety of quote and slogan images–see the official Tumblr page of the event.
Special thanks to Kate’s supporters on Patreon (for helping her to both write news like this and attend events like this).
by Kate McFarland | Sep 8, 2016 | News
Event Announcement: BIEN’s 30th Anniversary
An event commemorating the anniversary of BIEN’s founding will take place on Saturday, October 1 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium–the location of BIEN’s first meeting 30 years ago.
The anniversary event has been organized by the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics at the Université Catholique de Louvain in collaboration with BIEN.
Participants in the conference that launched BIEN
About the Anniversary Event
The anniversary event will begin, after a short welcome, with tales of BIEN’s birth as related from several cofounders: Paul-Marie Boulanger, Annie Miller, Guy Standing, Claus Offe, and Robert van der Veen.
Two parallel sessions will take place in late morning: one on the history of basic income (featuring Pierre-Etienne Vandamme on “Voltaire before Paine”, Guido Erreygers on “Brussels 1848” and Walter Van Trier, BIEN’s first secretary, on the British interbellum period); the other on implementations of basic income (featuring Philippe Defeyt on an income-tax-funded basic income of EUR 600, David Rosseels on micro-taxes on electronic payments, and Karl Widerquist on sovereign funds).
In the afternoon sessions, Enno Schmidt, co-founder of the Swiss popular initiative on basic income, and University of Lucerne Research fellow Nenad Stojanovic will review lessons learned from the Swiss referendum campaign. Then, discussion will turn to basic income experiments of the past and future. Guy Standing will talk about his work on pilots in India. University of Tampere Research Fellow Jurgen De Wispelaere will discuss the upcoming experiment in Finland, and BIEN cofounder Alexander de Roo (now chair of the Dutch basic income network) will discuss those to come in The Netherlands.
Finally, the conference will examine where the movement is heading next, with talks from Louise Haagh (BIEN co-chair), Stanislas Jourdan (co-founder of UBI-Europe), Roland Duchatelet (former senator and founder of Vivant), and Yasmine Kherbache (member of Flemish Parliament and, previously, chief of cabinet of former Belgian Prime Minister Di Rupo).
The event will conclude with reflections from two co-founders of BIEN, Claus Offe and Gérard Roland. They will be joined by political philosopher Joshua Cohen (UC Berkeley) and sociologist Erik Olin Wright (University of Wisconsin – Madison).
The anniversary event follows a two-day conference Utopias for our Time, which marks the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. Some participants in the BIEN anniversary event will also be speaking at this preceding event. For instance, Erik Olin Wright is to deliver a keynote address on the theme of the future of democracy, and Wright and Philippe Van Parijs will contribute to a special session on the question “Should academics engage indulge in utopian thinking?”
For more information on both events, see the event page at Université Catholique de Louvain.
Prospective attendees can register online through September 20.
Scene from BIEN’s founding meeting
About BIEN’s Founding
In 1984, three young researchers linked to the Université Catholique de Louvain–Paul-Marie Boulanger, Philippe Defeyt and Philippe Van Parijs–formed a group called the “Collectif Charles Fourier” to explore what they had chosen to call “allocation universelle”.
First written documentation of the existence of BIEN
Two years later — fueled by the unexpected earnings from a essay contest, for an essay on the “allocation universelle” — the Collectif Charles Fourier organized a international conference to discuss the idea. The conference, which convened in Louvain-la-Neuve in September 1986, gathered 60 invited speakers from throughout Europe.
Its final session would mark the genesis of the Basic Income European Network. (The name, suggested by Guy Standing, was chosen in part for the “good pun” of its acronym.)
In 2004, BIEN decided to become an inter-continental organization, owing to an increase in interest from outside of Europe. Unable to part with the acronym, the group decided simply to brand itself with the name it has today.
Read more about the history of BIEN.
Basic Income News will be providing continuing coverage of BIEN’s anniversary event.
Stay tuned for videos, photographs, and remarks from the participants, as well as other comments and reflections from current members of BIEN’s Executive Committee.
Text reviewed by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght.
Photographs and scanned document provided by Philippe Van Parijs.
by Kate McFarland | Aug 23, 2016 | News
The 16th “BIEN-nial” Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network was held at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea from July 7-9, 2016. (For details, see the congress website and the then-live Reddit reports.)
Videos of many sessions of the congress are now available on YouTube, including the following:
Plenary Session I: Visible Basic Income (Chair: No-Wan Kwack, University of Seoul).
- Philippe Van Parijs (Université de Louvain): “Why Is Basic Income More Relevant Today Than Ever Before?”
- Jan Otto Andersson (Åbo Akademi University): “Does Basic Income Fit the Nordic Welfare States?”
Plenary Session II: Basic Income, Socialism and Emancipation (Chair: Seung Kyung Yoo, Institute for Political and Economic Alternatives).
- Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University): “Basic Income as a Component of Liberal Socialism”
- Sarath Davala (India Network for Basic Income): “The Emancipatory Power of Basic Income: An Optimistic Note from Indian Experience”
Plenary Session III: Basic Income and Human Emancipation (Chair: Dongtaek Kim, Sogang University).
- Nam Hoon Kang (Hanshin University): “Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Universal Basic Income”
- David Casassas (Universitat de Barcelona): “Basic Income and Social Emancipation: A New Road to Socialism”
Plenary Session IV: Basic Income and Social Protection (Chair: Pablo Yanes Rizo, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe).
- Almaz Zelleke (NYU Shanghai): “Everyone a Capitalist: Basic Income and Redistribution”
- John Roberto Scott Andretta (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social): “Basic Income and Social Protection in Mexico”
Plenary Session V: Basic Income and Grassroots Feminist Movement (Chair: Barb Jacobson, UBI Europe).
- Toru Yamamori (University of Doshisha): “What Can We Learn from a Grassroots Feminist UBI Movement?: Revisiting Keynes’s Prophecy”
Plenary Session VI: Basic Income and Politics of Democracy (Chair: Hyosang Ahn, Basic Income Korean Network).
- Katja Kipping (German MP): “Das Grundeinkommen – Eine Demokratiepauschale” (“Basic Income: A Generalization of Democracy”)
Affiliates Roundtable. At the time of the congress, BIEN had 29 international affiliates; presenters from 18 affiliates participated in the roundtable.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Thanks, as always, to my supporters on Patreon
by Florie Barnhoorn | Aug 12, 2016 | News
Norbert Klein, the leader of the Vrijzinnige Partij (a small Cultural Liberal Party), has organized a debate about basic income in cooperation with the Vereniging Basisinkomen (the Dutch branch of BIEN). The event is scheduled for Thursday, September 1, 2016 from 13:30 to 17:30 in café Dudok, Hofweg 1a, The Hague.
Earlier this year, Norman Klein (pictured) initiated a memorandum for the Members of the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber of Parliament). “The labour market is changed fundamentally. The introduction of new, innovative concepts like a basic income is urgently needed to prevent large scale social inequality and social unrest by providing everyone of a secure, adequate income,” he argues in his memo called Zeker Flexibel (Security and Flexibility).
On September 19 (the first day of the 9th International Basic Income Week), this memorandum will be discussed with the Minister for Social Affairs and Employment, Lodewijk Asscher (of the Partij van de Arbeid or Labour Party) and the members of the Committee for Social Affairs and Employment of the Second Chamber of Parliament. The discussion is open to the public, and all are encouraged to attend.
Before this meeting, Mr. Klein wishes to discuss the “sense and nonsense” of an unconditional basic income with the general public. Thus, he organized the debate at café Dudok, which will feature the following participants:
- Reinier Castelein, chairman of the union De Unie (The Union). Castelein recently published a book entitled Welzijn is de nieuwe welvaart (Well-Being is the New Prosperity), in which he argues for the introduction of a basic income.
- Ben Ligteringen, secretary of the Economy Working Group of GreenLeft (a green political party). In a recent statement on policy advice, the Working Group expresses strong opposition to the idea of a basic income, out of both financial and social reasons. Mr. Ligteringen instead supports the idea that municipalities should create “basic jobs” for the unemployed and that such workers should be paid the minimum legal wage. These jobs would bring benefit claimants back into the world of work and allow them to participate in society. The Economy Working Group fears that the costs of a basic income are too high, and that it will provide less benefit for society at large in comparison to a “basic jobs” program.
- Alexander de Roo, new chairman of the Vereniging Basisinkomen (The Dutch branch of BIEN). Along with Philippe van Parijs and Guy Standing, De Roo was one of the co-founders of BIEN in 1986. He proceeded to serve as BIEN’s Treasurer until 2004. De Roo was also a founding member of GreenLeft (the Dutch Green Party) in The Netherlands during the 1980s. From 1999 to 2004 he was a Member of the GreenLeft section of the European Parliament.
- Raymond Gradus, professor of Public Economics and Administration at the Free University (VU University) in Amsterdam and former Director of the Research institute for the CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal). Gradus has published several articles in which he argues against basic income from the principle that each individual has the obligation to contribute to society “according to his ability”. He is convinced that the basic income does the opposite and is therefore a bad instrument to inspire participation in society. Mr. Gradus advocates a “participation income” instead.
