by USBIG | Oct 20, 2018 | Events, News
October 23, 2018 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Tulane University
Jones Hall, Room 108
Basic Income is an audacious idea—a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. Yet, growing numbers of people have come to support it, believing not only that welfare systems around the world are too stingy but also that they’re based on an entirely wrong approach. Karl Widerquist, whom
the Atlantic Monthly calls “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement,” will discuss how Basic Income removes the judgment and paternalism that pervade the world’s existing social welfare systems and why doing so is so important not only for people at the bottom but also for the average worker. He will discuss how to craft a realistic Basic Income proposal, how much it costs, options for paying for it, and the evidence for what it can do.
About the speaker
Karl Widerquist is an Associate Professor at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He has published seven books, including Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (coauthored) and Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No. He is a cofounder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network. He served as co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network for 7 years, and is cofounder of its news website, Basic Income News. He is a cofounder of the journal, Basic Income Studies, the only academic journal devoted to research on Basic Income. He has appeared on or been quoted by many major media outlets, including the New York Times, Forbes, the Financial Times, NPR’s On Point, NPR’s Marketplace, PRI’s the World, CNBC, Al-Jazeera, 538, Vice, Dissent, and others. Much of his writing is available on his “Selected Works” website. More information about him is available at his BIEN profile.
Tickets are Not required
For more information on this event, please visit https://www.facebook.com/TulanePhilosophyClub
by Daniele Fabbri | Oct 6, 2018 | News
Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang spoke at the Political Soapbox on Saturday, August 11th, 2018, during the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.
Andrew Yang, a democrat running for president, former entrepreneur and CEO, and author of “The War on Normal People”, addressed the crowd at the Political Soapbox explaining his program.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjaMqNUwD3I
He stated that one problem he identified lies in the fact that you need to move from places like Iowa in order to be able to find better career opportunities but, he said, there should be something better to do for young people rather than to move to Wall Street to make a lot of money for themselves. Ideally, after graduating from college, people would find a job, or build businesses, in the communities in which they are born and raised. An undergraduate should be able to volunteer, and make a living wage or better in his state, but nationwide people are required to move in order to pursue working opportunities.
This is the reason why he founded Venture for America in 2011, a non-profit with the aim of providing funds to top graduates and allowed them to take part in promising start-ups in developing cities around the U.S. But then he realized that this was not enough. There was a structural problem in the job market, and funding Venture for America alone was like “pouring water in a bathtub with a hole”.
The point is, in Andrew Yang’s opinion, technology will make human labor less essential.
He uses the example of some of the most common jobs in America – retail and sales, truck driving, and food prep. Automation is going to hit them all, with self-driving trucks already being tested in the field, moving in strict formation in order to optimize costs – a driving arrangement called platooning – and that expected savings from automation will be in the order of $168 billion per year in the freight industry.
Call centers will not be spared from automation, automated kiosks at McDonald’s will soon be more widespread, and 30% of malls will disappear in the next four years, due to Amazon gaining more and more of the market. The transformation will make many jobs obsolete, while stripping value from the many and concentrating it into the hands of a few.
Automation, if not dealt with appropriately, comes at a great cost, and people need to act together as a society to counteract the potential disruption brought by A.I.
In order to do so, Andrew Yang presents the three pillars of his campaign:
1)A $1,000 freedom dividend for each adult (which is a form of Universal Basic Income). Value is being hoovered up by the richest people, with the recent $1.5 trillion tax cut being spread unevenly, as only 6% went to workers. The time of trickle-down economics should come to an end, he says, and it should be substituted with trickle-up economics; money should move the other way around, from families and communities up. The economy is up to $19 trillion dollars, with an increase of $4 trillion in just the last ten years, and the Freedom Dividend is something feasible, he maintains.
2)Medicare for all, as healthcare costs are the number one cause of bankruptcy. People should be able to worry only about getting better, not about how to pay for it.
3)A new American Scorecard, which is a way to measure things differently than GDP does. This would include new indicators including well-being, mental and physical health, not only economic figures. This would also have an instrument which could account positively for motherhood work and parenting, and not for national defense expenses.
More information at:
Brianne Pfannenstiel, “Presidential hopeful Yang floats idea of $1,000 monthly ‘dividend’ for American adults”, Des Moines Register, August 18th, 2018
Sara Bizarro, “United States: Andrew Yang is running for President in 2020 on the platform of Universal Basic Income”, Basic Income News, April 8th, 2018
Article reviewed by Dawn Howard
by Guest Contributor | Sep 10, 2018 | Opinion
Written by: Jonathan Brun
For many years basic income advocates have lobbied for pilot projects to demonstrate the power of giving money to all citizens. Advocates all seem to use the short-lived Dauphin, Manitoba project in the 1970s as an argument for further pilot projects. This lobbying by advocates of Basic Income led to two pilot projects – one in Finland and one in Ontario, Canada. Finland’s program will end as originally scheduled this year and will not be extended. The pilot program in Ontario was canceled before any data could be gathered. This marks a significant setback for the Basic Income movement around the world.
The purpose of these pilot projects was to gather meaningful scientific data on the effects of basic income and use that to convince the public, bureaucrats, and politicians that basic income was a feasible and logical idea. However, scientific reasoning rarely works in the public sphere. Instead, basic income projects are at risk of ending prematurely. The reason Ontario’s experiment was canceled and Finland’s pilot program was not extended was not due to financial or scientific concerns, but rather because of politics. Therein lies the problem, if basic income projects are launched by politicians, they will be shut down by political situations.
Both of these pilot projects made a fundamental mistake – they targeted poor people. The projects were designed to show the benefits of a basic income over the traditional welfare system. They were not designed to show the benefits of a basic income for a wider part of society such as students, taxpayers or elderly people. By restricting the projects to people on or near welfare levels, the projects positioned themselves as yet another welfare program for the poor. As in most countries, the hard working, tax paying middle class has limited patience for welfare recipients. This is partially due to both constricting disposable income and human nature. We have seen country after country downsize their social welfare programs in an attempt to balance budgets, gain votes or free up cash for other programs such as tax cuts. Almost no country in the past thirty years has increased the size of their welfare programs. This should be a (big) hint to basic income advocates.
It is actually quite simple, most taxpayers have limited patience for people who do not work (for money). To think otherwise is simply idealistic and not aligned with the average (voting) population. At a recent discussion on the basic income debate in Montréal, Québec, I asked the famed basic income expert Evelyn Forget how she thinks we should pay for a basic income. Her response was that we should raise taxes on corporations and on people. When I replied this seemed challenging in the current political and economic situation, she responded that it was the best way to do it and people would just have to “deal” with higher taxes.
I strongly believe that the way you finance a basic income is the defining feature of a basic income. If you finance it through taxes, it will be viewed as another social welfare program not terribly different from numerous existing programs. This is a major problem. The entire idea of basic income is that it is different from other programs. If you finance it in the same way, through tax and redistribution, you are undermining the argument that makes basic income so appealing. Basic income is supposed to break the mold, join the left and right, simplify bureaucracy and give more freedom for individuals to build up their lives. If you fund it through taxes on workers, it will be viewed (rightfully so) as a transfer from workers to non-workers.
As an analogy to basic income advocacy, we can look at advocates for affordable housing. Both groups of advocates believe that what they are proposing is a basic right and should be made readily available. In the first case, basic income advocates argue that all members of a developed nation should have a minimum level of income that assures the essentials in life. Affordable housing advocates lobby that housing is a right, not a privilege, and it should be affordable for all members of society. I agree with both, but the way you go about implementing either is fundamental to the perception of the project by the general public.
For example, affordable housing levels in most western countries has decreased as an overall percentage of the housing market. This is due to affordable housing advocates taking the same approach as many basic income advocates – namely that affordable housing is there to alleviate the stress of expensive housing and that the affordable housing should mostly benefit the less fortunate. By casting their lot in with the poor, they are severely limiting the base of their political support.
Contrast that with Vienna, Austria. In Vienna, about 50 percent of the housing stock is owned, managed and maintained by the City. Basically, 50 percent of the housing stock is a public good, not a private good. Rents are remarkably affordable for a world class city and this brings dynamism and diversity to all the neighbourhoods. However, the main reason this was possible was because both the middle class and lower economic classes have a vested interest in the success of this public housing. This much larger political base assures that affordable housing projects continue. Basic income needs to take the same approach and stop advocating for basic income pilot projects as welfare replacements or as a poverty alleviation tool. It may indeed be that, but that is not the best way to advocate for basic income.
Contrast the controversy around pilot programs with the Alaskan Dividend Fund, which was instituted in 1976. The fund remains tremendously popular and has little risk of disappearing. Why? Because everyone gets it! No pilot project was done prior to the institution of the Alaskan dividend fund and no negative effects have emerged post-implementation. If there is one path forward for basic income, it is through the implementation of a lower level of basic income, but that goes to everyone – especially hard-working taxpayers who vote.
Basic income should think strategically about how they plan to convince the average person to vote for a basic income. It may take a distinct political party (for another post) or a clear advocate of basic income such as Andrew Yang in the United States, who has placed basic income at the center of his presidential campaign. No matter how you look at it, trying to get basic income to become a reality through the path of replacing or supplementing welfare payments is a doomed idea that will never work. Get the middle class on your side and basic income advocates can win this political battle.
Jonathan Brun, Cofounder Revenu de base Québec.
Slight edits by Tyler Prochazka.
Originally posted here: Basic Income Pilot Projects Won’t Work
by Andre Coelho | Sep 5, 2018 | News
After reporting on the two first days of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Tampere, Finland, 24th and 25th of August, a second and final part is here lay forth, covering for the event on the last day (26th). (Note 1)
Jamie Cooke, Sarath Davala, Evelyn Forget, Loek Groot and Olli Kangas all sat together at the University of Tampere main auditorium to speak and discuss basic income experiments. These stood for, respectively, the Scottish feasibility study (not yet a functional pilot), the Indian Madhya Pradesh basic income pilot (concluded – ran through years 2011 and 2012), Canadian experiments (past “Mincome” experiment and the interrupted Ontario pilot), the Netherlands transfer schemes (several Municipalities) and the Finish ongoing two-year experiment. The session was chaired by Phillipe van Parijs.
Jamie Cooke
The speakers were asked to freely describe each case. Olli Kangas assured the audience that the Finish experiment is going on as planned, and that results will start to be collected and organized after the ending date, in December 2018. He also confirmed that the studied variables were essentially related to paid work and related job market interactions, adding that survey data would be published at the beginning of 2019 at the latest. As for Evelyn Forget, she reminded that basic income experiments in Canada have been more focused on health outcomes, although work-related results have also been captured. She believes the Ontario pilot – six months into its planned duration – was cancelled for ideologic reasons (the new conservative government arguing that people should get jobs, instead of depending on unconditional transfers). In his turn, Loek Groot informed the audience that experiments in the Netherlands are not testing basic income, but several ways of managing people on benefits. He also added that the social benefits system in the Netherlands is decentralizing, hence the Municipalities initiatives to start these experiments which, generally, measure work-related variables, plus health and life satisfaction data. Finally, Jamie Cooke explained that the basic income idea in Scotland has very much gained from BIEN’s affiliate in the region (Basic Income Scotland) and its actions to spread the word about it. That and the work of RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), both in the United Kingdom and the local Scottish RSA, has helped in gaining traction for the (basic income) experiment. Jamie noted that the language used when presenting and discussing basic income must be clear, because people need to understand what is being done or planned.
At this moment, van Parijs introduced a provocative question: What, if any, would be the results of a basic income experiment that would lead you to give up on the basic income idea? Olli Kangas recognized that there could be such a result, taking on a cautious approach. However, he added, experimental results could always be “spun” politically in several directions, according to ideologic agendas. Evelyn Forget didn’t oppose to that view, although, contrary to Kangas, she thinks the outcomes of such experiments are already more or less predictable (drawing from past experiments analysis). Sarath Davala wouldn’t quite imagine himself not being a supporter of basic income, and so returned a more passioned answer: “I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it!”. He added, however, that basic income experiments also test if trusting people is good or not (he believes that it is good). Near the end of the session, Evelyn concluded that people love stories, caring much less about numbers and statistics. That is why she worries about eventual social destructive behaviours which may occur during (basic income like) experiments.
Parallel sessions during this last day of the Congress were widely varied, although only lasted through the morning period. Papers on freedom and (social) reparation, trade unions, work, rights, alternative currencies and the relation of all these with basic income were presented.
Evelyn Forget
The last Plenary Session was featured by Evelyn Forget, who explained in further detailed what happened with the Ontario experiment. She informed that first the new government argued that the experiment had “failed”, which could not be true since there was no data to justify that statement. In a subsequent argument (for having cancelled the experiment), the same government alleged that 25% of the recipients had dropped out, which was also false, for the same reason (no data). The true reason for slashing the basic income pilot finally came, when an official from the newly elected government stated that they did not believe in “free money”, but in people getting jobs. Forget was further concerned about this situation, aggravated by the fact that recipients were getting more or less twice then they would have from regular benefits (and now had to return to their original earnings, with no previous warning). The need to ease these recipients out of the experiment has motivated an insurgence of activity by Canadian social activists (mainly basic income advocates and anti-poverty organizations), to try and restart the experiment or at least to help people transition from their income support during the experiment to their former earnings.
Forget concluded the Plenary with more general considerations on income, welfare and basic income. According to her, income security is not only linked to precarious employment, but also with welfare bureaucracy, which has gotten so complex that people have difficulty in knowing what their earnings will be from month to month. Hence basic income would introduce a kind of income regularity that most people nowadays cannot really expect from the market nor from the State. She ended on the note that the goodness of basic income very much depends on its financing mechanism, which could turn an output of social solidarity into one of societal disintegration.
Closing the Congress, Annie Miller shared a few last words, emphasizing that BIEN Congresses have greatly expanded since their inauguration in 1986. All the same subjects are covered nowadays, as were before (ex.: poverty, social justice), but now including issues such as (basic income) experiments, environmental issues and cryptocurrencies. For her, the importance of research, dissemination of knowledge and activism for basic income cannot be overstated. Finally, Miller is confident that, although present-day world is (mainly) governed by sociopaths, the time has arrived to replace them with empathy, kindness and honesty.
Note 1 – Mistakenly, Lena Lavina’s Plenary Session was held on the 26th (first in the morning), but reported on part 1 as having been on the 25th. So now, the last Plenary held on the 25th, on basic income experiments, is reported on in the present article (part 2).
More information at:
BIEN Congress 2018 website
André Coelho, “BIEN Congress 2018 (part 1)”, Basic Income News, September 3rd 2018
by Daniele Fabbri | Aug 29, 2018 | Research
Dr. Matthew Johnson. Picture credit to: Lancaster University
Dr. Matthew Johnson, in an article published on LabourList, examines the effects of universal basic income (UBI) on stress. He co-authors with Elliot Johnson a paper with the title “Stress, domination and basic income: considering a citizens’ entitlement response to a public health crisis“.
The paper is partially based on an international and interdisciplinary study, involving a team of more than thirty academics, titled “A Cross-cultural Working Group on Good Culture and Precariousness“, on how to identify and promote a culture capable of fostering the welfare of disadvantaged groups in societies in which accomplishment requires exposition to high degrees of socio-economic insecurity.
“We are facing a crisis of stress”, Johnson says, as researchers have shown that almost half of the cases of work related ill-health are due to stress, with a quarter of people in the United Kingdom affected by stress-related long-term health conditions, which weight heavily on medical expenses. If you have suffered illness due to stress then you may be able to get compensation from your workplace, you might want to contact a workmans comp attorney to see if you could take legal action.
While the mechanism connecting chronic stress to ill-health is still debated, there is a general consensus that stress contributes to a large breadth of conditions, he adds, and studies have shown that as the position in the workplace hierarchy decreases, physiological measures of stress increase, correlating with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. These cardiovascular diseases could eventually lead to a cardiac event in the near future, so making sure that your workplace has been kitted out with equipment like the ZOLL AED Plus package will help to make sure that you are prepared for any situation that has arisen through workplace stress. You can read in the cited paper that: “The cause of stress in these circumstances is what the republican political philosopher, Philippe Pettit, has termed ‘domination’: being subject to arbitrary decisions of others made without reference to the interests of those affected by the decisions.”
Accusing neoliberal reforms involving promotion of flexibility as having exacerbated the problem, Johnson calls for an effort in promoting “freedom as non-domination”, in order to lessen the role of hierarchy in social relations which could be done through the implementation of UBI.
As John McDonnell of the Labour Party announced that the next Labour Party Manifesto may include a trial of UBI, the author stresses the need for it to also measure the physiological implications of stress, which would be an innovation in what concerns UBI trials. If you’re currently looking for a stress treatment, you could consider using CBD or related products such as redosing shrooms. These alternative medicines have been known to reduce work-related stress and anxiety in many patients. You could consider looking into companies like HerbMighty for detailed information about these products.
More information at:
Matthew Johnson, “Universal Basic Income can directly reduce work-related stress“, LabourList, August 20th 2018
