by Kate McFarland | May 15, 2017 | Research
The European policy journal Intereconomics has published a forum on basic income (“Universal Basic Income: The Promise vs the Practicalities”) in its March/April 2017 volume, featuring five short articles on the topic.
The introduction to the forum asserts that “real-world implementation [of a UBI] is anything but basic. No serious answers have been found to the question of how to finance such a system, and until a workable solution is found, a UBI is simply not feasible.” Several of the articles in the forum reflect this skepticism concerning the possibility of sustainably financing a basic income — including “The Basics of Basic Income” (available in full online) by John Kay of St John’s College in Oxford, “Universal Basic Income Financing and Income Distribution – The Questions Left Unanswered by Proponents” by Heiner Flassbeck (Makroskop Mediengesellschaft mbH), and “Universal Basic Income – Empty Dreams of Paradise” by Hilmar Schneider (Institute of Labor Economics).
On the other hand, Thomas Straubhaar (University of Hamburg) endorses UBI in “On the Economics of a Universal Basic Income” — calling it “the best social-political prerequisite for ‘prosperity for all’ in the 21st century.” Finally, Olli Kangas, Miska Simanainen, and Pertti Honkanen, three members of Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, discuss potential pros and cons of a partial basic income in their nation in the article “Basic Income in the Finnish Context” — concluding that “there are many strong arguments being made both in favour of and opposed to basic income. Unfortunately, there are not enough facts yet. The Finnish experiment hopes to change that.”
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo CC BY-ND 2.0 Hans Splinter
by Sarah Harris | Apr 2, 2017 | News
Cardiff Garcia, a writer for the UK-based Financial Times, interviewed Martin Sandbu, a philosopher and economist who writes Free Lunch, a daily newsletter on global economic policy. As he describes in the interview, Sandbu believes that a background in philosophical logic enables one to identify and question assumptions that are inherent within normative economic policy. His own philosophically informed analyses of economic policy have led him to support the idea of basic income — another topic discussed at length in the interview.
Sandbu discusses basic income in the historical and current context of American political, social, cultural and economic challenges. Among potential outcomes of basic income, Sandbu highlights positive ones that include risk encouragement, higher bargaining power for rural people, and decreased resentment within low and middle-income groups.
Listen to the podcast episode here: Alphachat
Photo CC BY 2.0 Zhou Tong
by Kate McFarland | Feb 25, 2017 | News
BIEN co-founder Guy Standing is slated to speak at a student-led economics conference at the University of Glasgow on March 12.
The Glasgow Economic Forum (GEF) is an annual conference organized by students at the University of Glasgow, intended to encourage undergraduate economics students to learn more “outside of the textbooks.” The third GEF will be held March 11-12, 2017, with a focus on economic growth. According to its Eventbrite page, the 2017 GEF “sets out to explore a plurality of perspectives on whether growth constitutes a means or is an end in itself.”
The conference’s headline speakers include BIEN co-founder Guy Standing (Professorial Research Associate at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), who will speak on themes from his latest book, The Corruption of Capitalism (2016, BiteBack), wherein he argues that “rentier capitalism” has broken down and needs to be replaced with an economic system centered on a basic income.
Other headline speakers include Professor Leszek Balcerowicz (former Finance Minister for Poland and the former President of the National Bank of Poland) and John Weeks (Professor Emeritus of SOAS).
According to the GEF’s website, the two previous conferences drew nearly 200 attendees from across Europe, including student groups from universities throughout the UK. Previous meetings focused on the global financial crisis of 2007-08 and its impact.
Guy Standing (credit: Enno Schmidt)
For Standing, the GEF meeting comes amid a busy week.
On March 9, he will meet ambassadors and officials of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to discuss basic income and the precariat. On March 10, he is scheduled to speak about The Corruption of Capitalism at the Headstrong Club in Lewes, UK, a debate and discussion venue that describes itself as promoting “high-quality discussion and debate on a wide range of topics” at special ticketed events. On March 11, he will meet with the National Union of Journalists in London to talk about the precariat. Then on March 13, the day after the GEF talk, Standing will present themes from this new book at a Marx Research Seminar at the University of Lincoln.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
University of Glasgow photo CC BY-SA 2.0 Alvin Leong
by Andre Coelho | Nov 9, 2016 | News
University of the Basque Country (in Wikipedia)
The XVI Basic Income Symposium at the Faculty of Economics and Business will take place on November 18-19. This event will be held at the Sarriko-Aula Magna, at this Faculty in Bilbao.
Presentations and debates will start at 9 am on Friday (the 18th) and close at 2 pm on Saturday (the19th). The event will start with a debate about the future of employment, job guarantees and basic income. Later in the afternoon on first day, the film “In the same boat” will be shown in the presence of its director, Rudy Gnutti. Basic Income experiments will be discussed at the end of the first day. On the next day, the annual meeting of BIEN’s affiliate Red Renta Básica will take place during the morning, followed by a discussion of the social, economic and political viability of basic income.
Longtime basic income activists, researchers and politicians will speak and debate at this conference, such as Lluis Torrens, Daniel Raventós, Pablo Yanes and Juan Carlos Monedero.
More information at:
In Spanish
Red Renta Básica, “XVI Simposio de la Renta Básica”, 14th September 2016
In Spanish and Catalan
Program of the XVI Simposio de la Renta Básica
by Kate McFarland | Nov 8, 2016 | News
This year’s edition of Ireland’s Kilkenomics Festival, the economics festival dubbed “Davos with laughs”, will include a panel discussion on the pros and cons of universal basic income, featuring Rutger Bregman and other noted authors.
Billing itself as “the world’s first economics and comedy festival”, the internationally-regarded Kilkenomics Festival is held annually in Kilkenny, Ireland.
The seventh edition of the festival will take place from November 10-13, 2016, and will bring in many notable participants, including its four headline contributors: behavioral economist and popular author Dan Ariely, former Milton Friedman associate Deirdre McCloskey, probability research and popular author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and comedian Dara Ó Briain.
On Saturday, November 12, the festival will present a panel on basic income, entitled “Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income”:
Debate has become to heat up on the concept of governments providing their citizens with a fixed amount of money, regardless of their income. Recently, Barack Obama suggested that as technology and artificial intelligence begin to replace human paid work, it will become increasingly urgent. Our panel examines the pros and cons of free money for everyone.
The panel will star Dutch journalist and historian Rutger Bregman, the author the best-selling Utopia for Realists, in addition to other distinguished scholars and authors: Deirdre McCloskey, Brown University political economist and Austerity author Mark Blyth, Financial Times columnist Martin Sandbu, Economics for Dummies co-author Peter Antonioni, and author and playwright Gerard Stembridge.
For a complete schedule of “shows” and other details about the seventh Kilkenomics Festival, see www.kilkenomics.com.
More information about the basic income panel in particular, including a link to purchase tickets, is available here.
Kilkenny castle photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 vjpaul
