NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

Malcolm Torry, Director of the UK-based Citizen’s Income Trust, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, and General Manager of BIEN, has signed a contract with the publisher Palgrave Macmillan to edit An International Handbook of Basic Income.

Torry is currently recruiting authors of each of the book’s chapters (listed below). The publisher has issued the following the call for authors:

Palgrave Macmillan is planning to publish An International Handbook on Basic Income, which it intends to be a definitive guide to the current state of the debate.

The editor, Dr. Malcolm Torry, is seeking chapter authors who will represent the best available scholarship from around the world.

A few of the chapters will be commissioned: but for most of them the editor is seeking expressions of interest.

If you would like to express an interest in writing one or more of the chapters then please contact him at generalmanager@basicincom.org or info@citizensincome.org with a CV and a list of publications on Basic Income. Bids for individual chapters from two or three authors from different parts of the world will be particularly welcome.

Dr. Torry will be at the BIEN Congress in Lisbon from the 25th to the 27th September, and he would very much welcome discussions with prospective authors or groups of authors.

The table of contents is as follows:

Part I: The concept of Basic Income

  1. The definition and characteristics of a Basic Income
  2. The history of Basic Income
  3. The anatomy of a global debate

Part II: The effects of Basic Income

  1. Employment market effects
  2. Social effects
  3. Economic effects
  4. Ecological effects
  5. Gender effects

Part III: Implementation of Basic Income

  1. The anatomy of a Basic Income scheme
  2. The administration of a Basic Income scheme
  3. Costings for Basic Income
  4. The framing of Basic Income
  5. The feasibility of Basic Income
  6. Alternatives to Basic Income
  7. The funding of Basic Income
  8. The implementation of a Basic Income scheme
  9. Objections to Basic Income
  10. An illustrative Basic Income scheme

Part IV: Pilot projects and other experiments

  1. Canada and the USA
  2. Brazil
  3. Iran
  4. Namibia
  5. India
  6. Switzerland
  7. Finland
  8. The Netherlands

Part V: The political economy of Basic Income

  1. Libertarian arguments for Basic Income
  2. Left wing arguments for Basic Income
  3. Neoliberal arguments for Basic Income
  4. Human rights arguments for Basic Income
  5. The justice of Basic Income
  6. The ethics of Basic Income

Blank book photo CC BY 2.0 kate hiscock

Scotland’s First Minister Announces Basic Income Experiments

Scotland’s First Minister Announces Basic Income Experiments

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, announced that a number of basic income experiments in her country will be funded by the national government. The local councils concerned – these being Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and North Ayreshire – had already committed to the experiments, but this is the first time that national funding for them has been made available.

The original plans for the experiments were developed in partnership with the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), a British charity which had previously produced an award-winning report on the potential means of implementing basic income in the UK. Anthony Painter, Director of the RSA’s Action and Research Centre and co-author of the report, said “There is a myth that Basic Income is at odds with work. We believe that it in fact forms a foundation for better work… We welcome experimentation and the support committed today helps Scotland join Finland, Canada and several places in the US in exploring how Basic Income can enable better and more secure working lives. We hope to see more such experiments across the UK.”

Jamie Cooke, Director of RSA Scotland, commented, “We are delighted to see this commitment from the Scottish Government to support the development of UBI pilots… We face challenges within the current social security system as it struggles to respond to modern challenges, and are in a period of flux in terms of the changing nature of work and employment. UBI offers an opportunity to respond to these challenges, breaking down barriers to work which currently exist, offering space for better quality work, and helping move people out of the precarious lives that many are currently stuck in.”

Sturgeon has stated that the results of the experiments will “inform parliament’s thinking for the future.” However, as Scotland is still part of the UK, it will not currently be able to put basic income into practice without the approval of the government of Great Britain.

The decision to fund the experiments has been reported on by the national British press, including the Independent and the Telegraph, both of which included a brief and largely accurate summation of the nature of universal basic income (UBI).

Sturgeon’s decision comes as she put forward a government programme which includes higher taxes to fund social services, and a plan to phase out sales of new petrol and diesel-powered vehicles. This has been seen by some as a political move to the left in order to fight back against the Labour party’s resurgent popularity in Scotland since the recent general election.

Teppo Eskelinen and Johanna Perkiö, “Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income”

Teppo Eskelinen and Johanna Perkiö, “Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income”

Teppo Eskelinen and Johanna Perkiö have published “Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income” in Development Policy Review (June 2017).

Eskelinen and Perkiö analyze basic income as a tool to promote micro-investments by poor individuals and households, hypothesizing that a basic income would impart to such households a “greater confidence to undertake more risky activities, knowing they will have a minimum income to fall back on.”

As they explain in the abstract, the authors “aim to estimate potential impacts of the BI by synthesising existing knowledge. This estimation will not be quantitative, but rather show likely outcomes of a BI scheme. We will complement existing knowledge by exploring cognate cash transfer policies and other experiences that bear similarity to the BI.”

As a core part of their analysis, the authors examine the pilot studies conducted in the Namibian village of Otjivero-Omitara (2008 to 2009) and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (2011 to 2013), looking especially at the effects on “labour, behavioural impacts, psychological impacts, and investment in human capital.” Regarding psychological impacts, they point out that, in the Madhya Pradesh experiment, “households receiving cash grants were three times more likely to start a new business or production activity than control group households,” which appears to affirm their conjecture that “the availability of money combined with a sense of security is what eventually determines the occurrence of micro-investment.” Regarding behavior, they note a “recurring observation” that part of recipients’ additional income was “invested in income-generating activities.”

Eskelinen is a philosopher and social scientist who has published on political theory, political economy, global justice, and development theory. He is senior lecturer at University of Jyväskylä.

Perkiö is a doctoral candidate in the social sciences at the University of Tampere, writing her dissertation on the history of the basic income debate in Finland (see her November 2016 presentation for Kela). Many of her previous articles and blog posts on basic income available online, including the Transform! Network discussion paper “Basic Income Proposals in Finland, Germany and Spain,” the International Solidarity Work report “Universal Basic Income – A New Tool for Development Policy?,” and a response to the OECD’s recent critical report on basic income, published on Kela’s blog.


Reviewed by Russell Ingram

Photo: Store in Madhya Pradesh, CC BY 2.0 Brian Gratwicke

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?”

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?”

Ville-Veikko Pulkka, a public policy researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki, has published his paper “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?” in European Review of Labour and Research.

Pulkka was previously employed as part of the research team at Kela, the Finnish Social Insurance Institution, responsible for the design and preparation of the nation’s two-year experiment replacing conditional unemployment benefits with an unconditional basic income.

The Finnish experiment has been the topic of most of his previous published work and presentations related to basic income (including presentations at conferences in Switzerland, Poland, Finland, and Ireland).

Pulkka’s research at the University of Helsinki, including his doctoral dissertation, centers on the implications of the digital economy for labor and public policy.

“A free lunch with robots,” his latest publication on basic income, moves away from focus on the Finnish experiment to explore the latter topic in more general terms:  

The discussion on the possible implications of the digital economy for labour continues unabated. An essential dimension of the discussion is the widely shared view that a basic income could guarantee sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers should technological unemployment and labour market insecurity increase. A budget-neutral basic income has serious limitations as an economic stabilisation grant, but if financing proposals are revised, these limitations can be tackled. Even though guaranteeing sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers does not necessarily require an unconditional universal benefit, it seems clear that traditional activation based on strict means-testing and obligations will not be a strategy flexible enough to guarantee sufficient consumer demand in fluctuating labour markets. An economically sustainable solution might be to reduce means-testing gradually and to study carefully the effects.

The full article is available behind a paywall here.


Reviewed by Russell Ingram.

Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Helen Taylor

Richard Branson supports UBI

Richard Branson supports UBI

Richard Branson. Credit to: Wikipedia.

Multi-billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin, recently became the latest wealthy entrepreneur to publicly support universal basic income (UBI), following similar public statements by Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook and Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr.

Writing on his personal blog on the Virgin website, Branson said: “In the modern world, everybody should have the opportunity to work and to thrive. Most countries can afford to make sure that everybody has their basic needs covered. One idea that could help make this a reality is a universal basic income. This concept should be further explored to see how it can work practically.”

He went on to discuss the UBI experiments currently taking place in Finland, and stated that: “A key point is that the money will be paid even if the people find work. The initiative aims to reduce unemployment and poverty while cutting red tape, allowing people to pursue the dignity and purpose of work without the fear of losing their benefits by taking a low-paid job.”

Branson also indicated that he had discussed this with The Elders, a group he helped to create which aims to be the “village elders” of the new “global village”. The Elders include members such as Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon. He reported: “What I took away from the talks was the sense of self-esteem that universal basic income could provide to people.”

More information at:

Richard Branson, “Experimenting with Universal Basic Income”, Richard Branson’s blog, 14th August 2017

 

Edited by Genevieve Shanahan