by Patrick Hoare | Sep 22, 2017 | News
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
by Kate McFarland | Aug 20, 2017 | News
Café Grundeinkommen, a tiny coffee shop in Berlin, Germany, doubles as a center for meetings and discussion of basic income. The café is now preparing to release a prototype of Circles, a cryptocurrency designed by one of its founders as a means to implement basic income.
Cafe Grundeinkommen
Members of Berlin Basic Income first discussed plans for a basic income café in June 2016, inspired by Swiss People’s Initiative. The hub of the Swiss campaign–which culminated that month in a highly publicized vote on a national referendum on basic income–was a café in Basel, unternehmen mitte, cofounded and managed by basic income advocate Daniel Häni.
A year later, in June 2017, Café Grundeinkommen opened as part of the Tinyhouse university project, an art exhibition at the Bauhaus Archive Museum in Berlin.
The café contains a small library for its guests–consisting of one shelf and a coffee table stocked with books on basic income, alternative economics, and cryptocurrency–and provides meeting place for small groups (including the weekly meetings of a local branch of Bündnis Grundeinkommen, a basic income political party competing in Germany’s federal elections in September). Due to its diminutive size, Café Grundeinkommen cannot house meetings of more than ten people. However, its team holds larger events at nearby buildings–such as a recent public presentation on Basic Income on the Blockchain held at the Bauhaus Pavilion.
Vegan baked goods
Currently open five afternoons per week, Café Grundeinkommen serves direct-trade coffee from the Berlin-based roastery Populus, meeting its commitment to using only “local, ethical, and sustainable” coffee.
Understandably, going to a restaurant/café for a cup of coffee may not be the best option for some people. Just as soon as they hear “you can buy coffee in wholesale” those people may become transfixed, and a spark might appear on their faces. Several companies, including Iron & Fire, deliver high-quality roasted coffee beans and even ground coffee beans right to your door. If interested, you can learn more about their services by visiting their website.
Anyway, in addition to coffee, the café offers one or two kinds of baked goods each day, usually vegan muffins or cookies.
Soon, guests of Café Grundeinkommen will be able to purchase coffee and snacks using a prototype version of Circles–a cryptocurrency designed by one café’s founders, Martin Köppelmann, as a possible mechanism for implementing universal basic income.
Discussing Circles
In the proposed monetary system, first put forth by Köppelmann at Berlin Basic Income’s inaugural meeting in December 2015, all individuals have their own currencies, in which their basic income grants would be paid. To engage in market exchanges, they must create “trust connections” with others with whom they are willing to trade currency. Exchanges can occur between–and only between–individuals who trust one another’s currencies. This type of trade exchange is interesting, especially for those who are interested in learning more about stock and currency trades and investments. Most may find a forex trading course interesting to take if they wish to further their experience within the investment market.
Köppelmann believes that such a digital currency provides the best medium for the distribution of a universal basic income. In his explainer “Introducing Circles,” he writes, “A world wide basic income is something so powerful that no single entity in the world should have control over it in order to preclude manipulation. Particularly, there should be no central authority that decides which person can get a basic income and which person cannot.”
Holy Foods House and Cafe Grundeinkommen
Café Grundeinkommen is currently nearing the launch of an app to put Circles to its first “real world” test. Users of the app will receive monthly credits (their “basic income”), which they will be able to use to “buy” products at the café, in addition to food from HolyFoods House (a food-sharing house neighboring the café), usage hours at the co-working space The New Work Studio, and tickets to events at the Bauhaus Campus.
Café Grundeinkommen’s Ronit Kory told Basic Income News, “We want to see how people will use it on their own, encouraging them to use the app to offer their own goods and services, including ones that might not be considered conventionally valuable in a capitalist system.”
It should be noted that the release of the prototype version of Circles is not a trial of basic income, merely a trial of a type of currency that Köppelmann proposes as a means by which a UBI might be distributed.
In addition to launching the Circles app, Café Grundeinkommen is planning monthly meetings featuring various speakers on subjects related to basic income, which it will announce on its Facebook and MeetUp pages.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram.
Photos used by permission from Cafe Grundeinkommen – Berlin’s Basic Income Cafe. Cover photo: Ronit Kory stands outside Café Grundeinkommen during its construction.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 26, 2017 | News
A new documentary on basic income — Free Lunch Society by Austrian director Christian Tod — premiered in Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre on March 20, 2017, to a crowd numbering in the hundreds.
The 90-minute film covers a range of “highlights” of the basic income movement, such as (for example) Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, Manitoba’s “Mincome” experiment, campaigns for guaranteed minimum income in the 1960s US, the 2008 basic income pilot in Namibia, Switzerland’s 2016 basic income referendum, and current concerns about automation. Along the way, it features interviews with prominent basic income proponents — including, among others, billionaire businessman Götz Werner (founder of the German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt), libertarian political scientist Charles Murray (American Enterprise Institute), venture capitalist Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures), Mein Grundeinkommen founder Michael Bohmeyer, Swiss referendum co-founder Daniel Häni, economist Evelyn Forget, and writer and entrepreneur Peter Barnes.
In an interview about the film (“Curiosity and the desire to improve the world”), Tod explains, “The film takes as its point of departure an ethical justification of basic income founded on the premise that natural resources belong to us all.” Tod’s musical selection — centered around the song “This Land is Your Land” — reflects this orientation toward the subject, as do his cinematographic decisions to include clips of natural scenery interspersed between the vintage footage and talking expert heads. (As he says in the same interview, “What might not come across quite so clearly in the completed film are elements which strike me as extremely important such as the countryside, the Earth, natural resources. I had wanted these aspects to be more prominent, but then the narrative would have suffered.”)
Tod has also acknowledged the influence of the science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation on his thinking about basic income and, eventually, the film: “It presents a society where there’s no money, where people only work because they really want to, and where they are driven by human curiosity.” Correspondingly, Free Lunch Society begins and ends with scenes from Star Trek.
About the interview subjects in his film, who were chosen in part to emphasize the political diversity behind support for basic income, Tod notes, “It’s interesting that they are almost all business people: owners of technology companies, CEOs of large or small companies, people who can afford to think about making the world a better place.”
Asked about the most surprising thing he learned while making the film — in an interview following the film’s premiere (see below) — Tod mentioned the discovery that “basic income was such a big thing in the United States in the 1960s,” tested in experiments and nearly voted upon.
Watch the Trailer
World Premiere Event
Most of Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre 648 were filled at the world premiere of Free Lunch Society on Monday, March 20, 2017.
Director Tod states, “It was a fabulous evening in a tremendous location. It was very special to have the world premiere of Free Lunch Society in Copenhagen, because my film career started in this beautiful city 10 years ago, when I studied at Copenhagen university’s film department. The premiere on Monday was, so far, the peak of my career in filmmaking. Almost 650 people watching my vision and applauding, laughing and apparently liking it, is hard to top.”
The film’s world premiere was followed by short interviews with Tod and Bohmeyer, as well as a panel discussion with Uffe Elbæk (Leader of the Danish green political party The Alternative; Danish: Alternativet), Steen Jakobsen (Chief Economist at Saxo Bank), and Dorte Kolding (Chair of BIEN-Danmark). All three panelists were sympathetic to the idea basic income, although Elbæk explained that The Alternative was not prepared to endorse it — though they would be willing to pursue pilot studies, and though the party’s political agenda includes the provision of benefits to the poor “without specific control measures” (that is, without conditionalities like work requirements, similar in spirit to a basic income). Jakobsen advocates a negative income tax, as proposed by Milton Friedman, as a way to increase the purchasing power of the lower and middle classes and produce a more equitable distribution of wealth. Watch below (panel discussion and debate in Danish).
The world premiere was followed by several other showings in Copenhagen, including one which was held as part of BIEN-Danmark’s Annual Meeting (March 25, 2017), with showings in Austria scheduled in late March and early April.
More Information
Free Lunch Society Official Facebook page.
Jannie Dahl Astrup, “‘Free Lunch Society’: Øjenåbnende ørefigen til kapitalismen,” Soundvenue, March 20, 2017 (film review, language: Danish).
Thanks to Karsten Lieberkind for helpful information and reviewing a draft of this article.
Photo: Free Lunch Society promotional image from CPH:DOX.
by Philippe van Parijs | Jun 6, 2016 | Opinion
Despite being factually defeated in the ballots, the Swiss initiative for basic income should be regarded as a giant step in the now unstoppable march towards basic income, says BIEN Founder Philippe Van Parijs.
Philippe Van Parijs is Professor at UCLouvain, Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics. Chair of BIEN’s International Board
June 5th, 2016 will be remembered as an important landmark in the worldwide march towards the implementation of unconditional basic income schemes. On that day, all Swiss citizens were asked to express their approval of or opposition to the following proposal:
- The Confederation introduces an unconditional basic income.
2. The basic income must enable the whole population to live a dignified life and to participate in public life.
3. The law will determine the funding and level of the basic income.
The proposal was rejected, with 76.9% of the voters against, 23.1% in favor. Why was this rejection predictable? And why is it such an important step forward?[1]
From 0 to 23%
To answer these questions, a brief historical overview is in order. In 2008, the German film maker Enno Schmidt and the Swiss entrepreneur Daniel Häni, both based in Basel, produced Grundeinkommen: ein Kulturimpuls, a “film essay” that gave a simple and attractive picture of basic income. The dissemination of this film through the internet helped prepare the ground for a popular initiative in favor of the proposal quoted above, which was launched in April 2012. Another popular initiative, which proposed an unconditional basic income funded specifically by a tax on non-renewable energy, had been launched in May 2010, but it failed to gather the required number of signatures. The initiators of the 2012 initiative first thought of specifying that the basic income should be funded by the Value Added Tax, as was suggested in the film, but they dropped the idea for fear of reducing support for the proposal. They also chose not to stipulate a precise amount of the basic income in the text itself. But their website did mention a monthly amount of 2500 Swiss Francs per adult and 625 Swiss Francs per child as the best interpretation of what was required, in Switzerland, “to live a dignified life and to participate in public life”. If an initiative gathers over 100.000 validated signatures in 18 months, the Federal Council, Switzerland’s national government, has the obligation to organize a country-wide referendum within three years either on the exact text of the initiative or on a counter-proposal to be negotiated with the initiators.
On the 4th of October 2013, the initiators handed in spectacularly 126.406 valid signatures to the federal chancellery. On the 27th of August 2014, after validation of the signatures and examination of the arguments, the Federal Council rejected the initiative without making a counter-proposal. In its view, “an unconditional basic income would have negative consequences on the economy, the social security system and the cohesion of Swiss society. In particular, the funding of such an income would imply a considerable increase of the fiscal burden”. The proposal was subsequently submitted to both Chambers of the Swiss Parliament. On the 29th of May 2015, the Commission of Social Affairs of the National Council (Switzerland’s federal house of representatives) recommended by 19 votes against 1, with 5 abstentions, that the proposal for an unconditional basic income should be rejected. After a thorough discussion at a plenary session on the 23rd of September 2015, the National Council proceeded to a preliminary vote and endorsed this negative recommendation by 146 votes against 14 and 12 abstentions.
On the 18th of December 2015, the Council of States (the Swiss Senate, made up of representatives of the cantons) considered the initiative in turn and rejected it by 40 votes against, 1 in favor and 3 abstentions. On the same day, the proposal was the object of a second and final vote in the National Council: 157 voted against, 19 in favor and 16 abstained. In all cases, all the representatives from the far right, center right and center parties voted against the proposal. All pro votes and abstentions came from the socialist party and the green party, both of which were sharply divided. At the final vote in the National Council, 15 socialists voted in favor, 13 against and 13 abstained, while 4 greens voted in favor, 5 against and 3 abstained. The degree of support thus oscillated between 0% in the Federal Council, 2% in the Council of States and 4, 8 and 10% in the National Council (commission, preliminary and final vote).
For the popular vote on the 5th of June 2016, the national leaderships of nearly all parties, including the socialist party, recommended a “no” vote. The only exceptions were the green party and the (politically insignificant) pirate party, which recommended the “yes”, joined by a number of cantonal sections of the socialist party from all three linguistic areas. Against this background, it was entirely predictable that the no vote would win. The actual results of nearly one vote out of four for “yes” — with peaks at 35% in the canton of Geneva, 36% in the canton of Basel-Stadt, 40% in the city of Bern and 54% in the central districts of Zürich — is far above what the voting record in the Swiss parliament would have led one to expect. We must, moreover, bear in mind that Switzerland is perhaps the country in Europe in which support for an unconditional income should be considered least likely, not only because of the deeper penetration, in Calvin’s homeland, of a Calvinist work ethic, but above all because of the comparatively low levels of unemployment and poverty it currently experiences.
In Switzerland and beyond: broader and more mature
Everyone now realizes, however, that even if the initiative had not managed to gather the votes of more than the 2.5% of the Swiss citizens who had given their signatures at the initial stage, it would have been, thanks to the initiators’ stamina and their impressive communication skills, a stunning success. There is now no population in the world or in history that has given more thought to the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal than the Swiss have done over the last four years. And the effect was by no means confined to Switzerland. Just in the few days preceding the popular vote, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Guardian, and countless other newspapers around the world felt forced to publish substantive articles in order to explain at length — sometimes quite well, sometimes not so well — what a basic income is and what it is about. There is certainly no week in the history of the world in which the media have allocated so much time and space to a discussion of basic income.
Apart from giving a big boost to the spreading of the idea, the Swiss initiative has also greatly contributed to the maturing of the debate about it. For one lesson to be drawn from the experience is that a proposal that stipulates a high amount for a basic income, but no precise way of funding it, can easily gather the required number of signatures for a vote – while still being a long way from convincing a majority among the voters who bother to turn up on voting day (about 46% of the electorate in this case). A shining star that indicates the direction is enough for the former, but visible signposts on the ground marking a safe path in its direction are essential to achieve the latter. Whenever I was invited to join the Swiss debate, I argued that introducing in one go an individual basic income of CHF 2500 (38% of Switzerland’s GDP per capita) would be politically irresponsible. True, no one can prove that such a level of unconditional basic income is not economically sustainable. But nor can anyone prove that it is. Nor will any local experiment performed or planned in Switzerland or elsewhere prove that it is. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the economic sustainability of an unconditional basic income at that level will require a number of preconditions currently unmet, including the introduction of new forms of taxation — for example the micro-tax on electronic payments that played an interesting role in the Swiss debate — and effective international cooperation against tax evasion — not exactly Switzerland’s strongest point.
In the immediate future, however, it should now be clear that more modest but significant steps forward can and must be worked out and debated. They must involve an individual unconditional basic income at a lower level (say, 15 or 20% of GDP per capita) that would still need to be topped up by means-tested social assistance benefits or housing grants, certainly for urban single-adult households. It is not because in many cases the unconditional basic income would not suffice, on its own, to “enable the whole population to live a dignified life”, that it would not make a big difference to the security, bargaining power ad freedom of choice of many of the most vulnerable among us. Even in the short run, introducing such an unconditional basic income is definitely sustainable economically. It is up to us to make it politically achievable.
The totally unprecedented Swiss initiative has not only made many people, in Switzerland and far beyond, far more aware of the nature and size of the challenges we face in the twenty first century and of how a basic income might help us address them; by triggering countless objections, some naive and some spot on, it has also helped the advocates of basic income to sharpen their arguments and to better see the need for realistic next steps. For both of these reasons, the Swiss citizens who devoted a tremendous amount of time, energy and imagination to the “yes” campaign deserve the warm gratitude not only of the basic income movement worldwide, but of all those fighting for a free society and a sane economy.
[1] Many thanks to Nenad Stojanovic (Zurich and Princeton) for reliable information and insightful comments.
by Jessica "Trinley" Rafka | Jun 5, 2016 | Opinion
The preliminary polls are in for all Cantons (states) in Switzerland. As many already know, the referendum did not pass, with only about 23% of voters in favor of it.
From the website for the Swiss Federal Council
%-Yes Vote for Basic Income ; Average: 23.1 %
These are the provisional results on election day this Sunday. The final results will be in after validation by the Federal Council—a good 2 months after the vote – and the final results may differ slightly from the provisional results.
Note: population numbers multiplied by 1000
According to statistics reported on PolitNetz.com, a platform that claims to provide politically independent information, all five major Swiss parties recommended a “NO” vote on the referendum.
The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) unofficially polled prospective voters in April, and the results looked slightly better than the results today:
According to the Swiss government portal (www.ch.ch), a “referendum allows the people to alter the text of the constitution” to reflect changes they wish to make to the law. Within an 18 month period, 100,000 signatures must be collected in support of the referendum for it to be considered. The referendum then has to pass with both a popular majority and a majority of the cantons, for it to become the law. But even then, the government reserves the right to alter the text to suit their interpretation of it.
The Universal Basic Income initiative would have amended the Swiss Federal Constitution to read as follows:
Art. 110a (new) unconditional basic income:
- The Confederation shall ensure the introduction of an unconditional basic income;
- The basic income to enable the entire population a dignified existence and participation in public life;
- The law regulates in particular the financing and the amount of the basic income.
Although, the results are not a total surprise for the Swiss, in whom it is still deeply ingrained that work is tied to income, Swiss media outlets are already speculating as to the reasons for this massive blow to the referendum. Some are saying that even the Swiss Social Democratic Party, that has been favorable towards the general idea of a basic income, feared that the text was “too vague” and all social benefits would be scrapped at once, leaving the most vulnerable even more so.
Despite the apparent “slap in the face”, many Universal Basic Income supporters see these results as very positive! Co-initiator of the Referendum, Daniel Häni reports that he’s happy with the results, “I would have only expected 15 percent approval. It is amazing and sensational that we are now at more than 20 percent.”
