by Toru Yamamori | Aug 17, 2015 | News
Nico Hammann collected around 5,000 signatures for the Swiss basic income initiative helping it succeed in collecting the more than 100,000 signatures that were needed to force a national referendum on the issue. The initiative submitted the signatures to the federal parliament in Autumn 2013 and the referendum will take place in Autumn 2016.
Hammann sadly passed away 1st May 2015. Enno Schmidt, Hamman’s friend and fellow activist, has made an obituary film: ‘…For Nico’. The language is German subtitled in English. Here are some extracts of Hamman’s words from Schmidt’s film:
“I’m a trained natural-stone tiler, and worked on building sites as a construction worker, as polisher. Then I got sick, suffered a hernia and was fired immediately. I had to find something new. This brought me to industrial building maintenance – I cleaned air-duct and was mobbed. I saw how badly people are treated, and labour laws simply misused. …When I started fighting back, I had a severe heart attack…….Then I came across Basic Income Guarantee.”
“One can’t point to someone and say: ‘Hey, you’re on welfare, and I’m not!'”
“But when they laughed and pointed at us, saying ‘These people and their crazy ideas!’, that just motivated me to collect more signatures. I wanted to show: ‘hey, things can be different! There are other ways.'”
by Jenna van Draanen | Jul 14, 2015 | News
Swiss Parliament
After taking a vote, the Swiss Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs proposes to its board the recommendation that people and policy makers reject the popular initiative for an unconditional basic income as they believe that the acceptance of this initiative could challenge existing social security systems and be difficult on the Swiss economy.
Next, the issue will come before the National Council and then the Council of States, with both issuing a recommendation. A public referendum will be held in fall 2016.
For more information about the vote and the committee’s recommendation, see here:
Christian Muller & Daniel Straub. “Alert” Volksinitiative für ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen. May 29, 2015.
Secretariat of the Commissions for Social Security and Health. “Media Release”. The Federal Assembly. May 29, 2015
by Liam Upton | Jul 8, 2015 | News
A number of groups within Spanish political party Podemos are campaigning to make Basic Income a central party policy before the upcoming general election, scheduled for the end of November this year.
The party is a relative newcomer to Spanish politics, forming less than 2 years ago, but with widescale dissatisfaction with established parties, it stormed to the top of opinion polls and won 5 seats in the European elections after less than 10 months in existence. A central policy during those elections was Basic Income(1.12), at the time part of one of the party’s six core policies.
The party has since dropped in the polls to third on average and Basic Income no longer has such a prominent place among its principles. The first indication that Basic Income may have lost favour was a landmark economic document published in 2014, designed to put meat on the bones of what some had claimed were unrealistic policies. The document didn’t mention Basic Income, instead talking of a conditional, means-tested Guaranteed Minimum Income. The document was described at the time as a ‘realistic’ plan for Spain’s economy.
Then another important party document, this time the program for the regional Autonomous Communties elections, also failed to mention Basic Income, again favouring a Guaranteed Minimum Income. This document was again called a ‘short-term’, ‘realistic’ and ‘general’ plan for the five years after the elections.
However, there has been push back within the party to return Basic Income to its position as core party policy in time for the general elections in November. The party’s internal ‘Círculo Renta Básica’ or Basic Income Circle, launched a petition, which currently has over 13,000 signatures out of a necessary 37,000. If successful, the petition would force an internal referendum on whether to enshrine Basic Income as core party policy, a decision which could then only be changed with another referendum.
After this, the influential Circle for the Economy, Ecology and Energy adopted a policy document entitled ‘Proposed Economic Program, The Fiscal Reform Spain Needs’ which prominently proposed a Basic Income of €7,500 a year for every adult and €2,250 a year for every child. At the time the national leadership said there may not be space for every idea from the document in the general election program.
Then, Juan Carlos Monedero, called by the media the former ‘number 3’ of Podemos, also called for the party to include Basic Income in their election manifesto.
And most recently of all, a number of senior party figures, including an MEP and regional deputies, joined the call for the prioritisation of Basic Income, releasing a document called ‘Opening Podemos’. The document called for more transparency and to avoid turning into ‘just another party’, with Basic Income listed as the number one policy that they wanted the party to support.
There has so far been little response from the party leadership on the issue other than the repeated release of party documents failing to mention Basic Income, favouring instead the limited, means-tested Guaranteed Minimum Income. General elections are tentatively scheduled for the 29th of November this year with Podemos currently placing third in most opinion polls, polls which also suggest no outright winner of the contest. Even without a boost before the vote, this will leave the party in an influential position to change the course of Spanish politics. The best hope for Basic Income to be part of that change, should the leadership continue to ignore calls for its re-instatement, is possibly the intended internal referendum, which, if enough signatures are collected, may take place in the coming months.
For more information, see:
Language: Spanish
Podemos, “Documento Final del Program Colaborativo [Final Document of the Collaborative Program]” (European Elections manifesto), 09 May 2014
Liam Upton, “SPAIN: Podemos Leave Basic Income out of Landmark Economic Document”, BIEN, 30 November 2014
Language: Spanish
Francesco Manetto, “Podemos olvida sus medidas más radicales en un programa difuso [Podemos forget their most radical measures in diverse manifesto]”, El País, 05 May 2015
Stanislas Jourdan, “SPAIN: Podemos working group seeks 37,000 signatures to reinstate basic income as a manifesto commitment”, BIEN, 14 April 2015
Language: Spanish
Alejandro López de Miguel, “Podemos plantea una renta básica de 7.500 euros al año por adulto y de 2.250 por menor [Podemos considering a Basic Income of 7,500 euros a year per adult]”, Público, 24 April 2015
Language: Spanish
Aitor Riveiro, “Cargos de Podemos reclaman “pluralismo interno” y “apertura al exterior” ante el reto de las generales [Senior figures in Podemos demand “internal pluralism” and “openness to the outside” before general election challenge]”, El Diario, 10 June 2015
Language: Spanish
M Ruiz Castro, “Monedero presiona a Podemos para que incluya la Renta Básica en el programa de los generales [Monedero pressures Podemos to include Basic Income in general election manifesto]”, ABC, 08 June 2015
by Joerg Drescher | Jul 6, 2015 | Opinion
In general terms, power is “to make someone want what you want”. You can use hard power – physical force or punitive measures, such as economic sanctions – to achieve this goal. However, there is another way – you can appeal to the reason of those, whose behaviour you want to change, by rewarding (sometimes seducing or bribing) means. The latter is called soft power.
In this article I use the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to show how a basic income – a regular payment to individuals irrespective of their income – could strengthen soft power.
As some of you may already know, I witnessed 2013/14 the revolution in Ukraine. Last year, right after the revolution, Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia and soon after Russia-supported terrorists have started a military aggression against Ukraine in the east of the country. As a response, the European Union, the United States and several other countries have introduced economic sanctions against Russia. This was legally backed up by the General Assembly of the United Nations, when more than 100 countries voted to affirm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and made it very clear that the phoney ‘referendum’ in Crimea was illegitimate and illegal.[1]
However, a group of investigative journalists found out that the realisation of the EU sanctions is not controlled. Each member state decides on its own, whether to implement the sanctions or not. As a result, almost no assets of sanctioned Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, officers and businessmen were seized as intended by the EU. Later, the Institute for Economy Research in Vienna conducted a study on how the EU economy could be affected by their own sanctions. The findings showed that in a worst-case scenario about two million jobs and a value added of 100 billion euros could be lost within the European Union, if the sanctions were, in fact, implemented.[2] On top of that, Ukraine is far from being the only problem in Europe. The euro crisis, the situation in Greece, and a swing to the far right are setting alarm bells ringing in the EU.[3]
Thus, an euro-dividend proposed by Philippe van Parijs[4] – a similar idea to basic income – would make the unemployment issue in the EU less dramatic, because it provides a social security net. Either proposal could solve the euro crisis or the situation in Greece, and also help stop driving excluded people to political extremists.[5]
Now you may think that basic income would rather strengthen hard power than soft power, since the EU member states would get an opportunity to sanction Russia without having negative effects on their own economy. Your way of thinking is right. However, basic income does also strengthen soft power.
According to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, a country’s soft power rests on three resources: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority).”[6]
Taking these resources into account, a basic income could strengthen soft power, because it makes it easier for the EU to implement the foreign policy by imposing sanctions against Russia (legitimated by the UN) and, most importantly, by having a moral authority – as the EU would show it cares about its people and does not leave them economically alone with the effects of those sanctions.
This picture, which was at the barricades on the Maidan in Kyiv, shows that Ukraine wants to go with the EU instead of being dependant on Russian gas and adopting an authoritarian system like in Russia (picture by Ralf Haska)
Thinking back how the “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine started, it is obvious that the EU attracted Ukrainians with its culture and political values. When the former president Victor Yanukovych refused to sign a long-negotiated Association Agreement with the European Union, it caused deep indignation among many Ukrainians.[7] Even now, when Ukraine is war-torn and facing huge economic recession, to a great extent, due to the corrupt regime of Yanukovych, the EU is still more attractive than the authoritarian regime of Russia to most Ukrainians.
However, Ukrainians have to pay an enormously high price for their European choice. Beside the fact that there is an on-going military conflict in Eastern Ukraine resulting in tragic human loses, displacement and destruction of homes and infrastructure, they have to accept painful reforms, which decrease their income. They have to face inflation, increasing costs (mainly for energy), the devaluation of the national currency (hryvna lost more than 100 per cent from its value before the revolution) and unemployment (thousands of civil servants lost their jobs in the state sector and the jobs in the private sector are not secure).
A basic income could help Ukraine solve several problems – mainly related to corruption and social politics.[8] Ukrainians are not job-, but rather “income-less”: myriad volunteers have been helping and supporting more than a million internally displaced persons, the army, bereaved family members of killed or wounded civilians and soldiers all over the country. Even the most needy Ukrainians are willing to share what little they have to help and defend their country. The question may arise: what for?
If the EU is selling its moral values by caring more about the welfare of its economy and defending its assumed status quo rather than caring about the well-being of its people, it might lose its soft power by disappointing not only Ukrainians, but also its own people. Therefore, I think a basic income could strengthen soft power – by being attractive through common shared values and bringing back the end of the community of states to its origin: keeping peace within and among countries and in the world.
Sources:
[1] Samantha Power, answer at Facebook, approximately 2:30 minutes, 16. May 2015
[2] Video of Joerg Eigendorf (English, approximately 3 minutes), Die Welt, 19. June 2015
[3] “Strange Bedfellows: Putin and Europe’s Far Right”, World Affairs, by Alina Polyakova, autumn 2014
[4] Video of the lecture by Philippe van Parijs: “No Eurozone Without a Eurodividend” (approximately 1,5 hours), BIEN-Congress in Munich 2012
[5] Interview with Guy Standing (approximately 2 minutes), 14. February 2010
[6] “The Future of Power” by Joseph S. Nye, chapter “Sources of Soft Power”, PublicAffairs, 2011
[7] “Opinion: Basic Income and the Ukrainian Revolution” by Joerg Drescher, 30. December 2013
[8] “Opinion: Universal and Guaranteed Income? A Matter of Basic Rights” by Emanuele Murra, 30. April 2012
Further readings on soft power:
A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy
