The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, has just endorsed a carbon tax in which all funds go to a direct cash dividend. This came in a letter to the Green Party of Ireland and has been confirmed by the press. Varadkar was responding to questions posed by Eamon Ryan during a session of the Dáil (Parliament). Ryan calls for “an increase in [the] carbon tax in which every single cent would go back to the Irish people—a dividend.” Eamon Ryan is the Green Party’s leader in the Dáil (Parliament).
Ryan considers Varadkar’s response to be an endorsement of the Green proposal. The Green Party has issued a press release. In it, they express pleasure to hear that the government likes combining a carbon tax with a cash dividend but stress that they consider alternative energy and transportation to be their highest priority in addressing climate change.
In his address to the Dáil and in an interview on the Irish Times’ “Inside Politics” podcast, Ryan calls for an increase of €20 per ton in the carbon tax, with an increase of €5 per ton each year until it reaches €90 per ton. The tax revenue would be entirely returned to the public as a dividend. (If you consult the podcast, discussion of the carbon tax and dividend begins at 20 minutes and forty seconds).
Illustration posted by Eamon Ryan on his Twitter feed.
“Every single cent that will be raised will be returned with a check in the post.” In the podcast, journalist Hugh Linehan makes it clear that this would be cash that goes directly to everyone in Ireland. Ryan points out that those with lower incomes would come out with more cash than they have to pay in increased taxes. He sees this as a way to avoid a popular revolt against a carbon tax like the one Emmanuel Macron has seen in France. He hopes that this will retire the debate over the carbon tax and achieve larger changes in energy and agriculture. “[The carbon tax and dividend] will deliver maybe five, ten, fifteen, or twenty percent of the change we need.”
The Irish Times is considered the paper of record in Ireland.
The Green Party (Camhaontas Glas) has two members of the Dáil Éireann. If they gain more seats in the next election, they are considered a likely coalition partner in a future government.
The current government is run by Fine Gael, a party that caucuses with Conservative parties in Europe but seeks to be seen as pragmatically responsive to poverty and ecological issues. Ireland has seen campaigns to prevent increased water charges and to promote public action on housing.
The Irish Times has surveyed government leaders in Ireland who seek to emphasize that carbon tax increases would be “revenue neutral”, returning all funds to citizens as a dividend. The dividend is seen as a way to meet the climate change obligations set by the European Union without harming lower-income people.
In the discussion of the carbon tax and dividend, there is no discussion from the government or the opposition parties of the carbon tax and dividend as a basic income. Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan is very careful to stress that the dividend is just a small part of a plan to make Ireland ecologically responsible.
The idea that a carbon dividend is a basic income has not arisen in the Times or in the debate in the Dáil. The term “basic income” has not come up in the discussion of the carbon tax. This reflects a pattern found elsewhere. If a dividend is debated as an answer to poverty, it faces more scrutiny than if it is debated as a repair for the regressive effect of another policy.
Basic Income Ireland and Social Justice Ireland promote the idea that basic income has emancipatory potential. The idea that three to four percent of a country’s GDP could fund a dividend that abolishes poverty is still not being debated by any of the parties currently in the Dáil.
BIEN Civic Forum will be held on the 22nd of August. On this day, having been called “India Day”, two major plenary discussions will be held: one that focuses on the Indian state of Telangana and its policy initiatives related to basic income, and a second one about the more general debate at the Indian national level.
As for the Thematic Areas for Plenary Sessions, these have been improved and detailed, as follows:
Ideological Perspectives and Diverse Worldviews on Basic Income
Exploring different ideological perspectives and worldviews that see an unconditional Basic Income as a desirable component of a more equitable and inclusive society
Women’s Care and Unpaid Work: Is Basic Income an essential component of a new paradigm of Equity?
What implications and impact would basic income have on the lives women who constitute more than half of the global population? Can we talk of a sustainable society as long as we steal labor from women? Can an unconditional basic income remedy this structural inequity?
Is Basic Income the Foundation of a Caring Economy and Society?
Is it possible to build an economy and a society that is based on values of caring, sharing and partnering rather than power, domination and control? Is an unconditional basic income an essential ingredient of such a society?
The Emancipatory Potential: What forms of Freedom and what kind of Community Life does Basic Income promote?
Basic Income experiments across the world have demonstrated repeatedly that an unconditional basic income has a strong emancipatory effect of its recipients. It loosens the constraints of existence and liberates the mind to seek a life and a community better than what we have now. What implications does this freedom and emancipation have on us and the communities that we dwell in?
Basic Income, the Commons and Sovereign Wealth Funds
Our society privileges and celebrates private inheritance, but it equally turns invisible what can be called our public inheritance, and the fact that it is people who own natural resources and the state is just a custodian. This perspective if implemented can radically transform the way we view, manage and account for our natural wealth and endowments.
BI Pilots: Opportunities and Limits of Evidence
In both the low-income countries and in high-income countries, there have been basic income pilot studies. While we already have the results of some of the studies, by mid-2019, we are likely to have more results. The Congress will deliberate both the results and also what they can achieve in terms of policy change
Basic Income and Political Action: What does it take to transform and idea into policy?
It is one thing to have strong evidence from pilot studies and something else to get the acceptance of the policy makers and persuade them to act on it. There have been some pioneers among politicians and policy-makers across continents who have taken the plunge and implemented different versions unconditional income transfers, inspired by the spirit of the idea of basic income. Do we see them as first steps towards a full UBI? Or as distortions of the idea?
Development Aid and Corporate Philanthropy: Is Basic Income a Better Paradigm and Way Forward?
In recent years, there has been a great deal of rethinking about the effectiveness of the current paradigms of giving aid either to countries or to communities. Unconditional Basic Income is increasingly emerging as a radical alternative to conventional notions of giving aid. We witness this shift as much within the UN think-tanks as that of corporate philanthropy.
As for thematic areas for concurrent sessions have been updated and completed:
Ideological Perspectives on Basic Income
Women’s Care and Unpaid Work: Is Basic Income the new paradigm of Equity?
Basic Income in Development Aid Debate: Is there a Paradigm-shift?
Religious Perspectives on Basic Income
Basic Income as a Foundation of a Caring Economy and Society?
What forms of Freedom and What kind of Community Life does Basic Income promote?
Basic Income and Blockchain Technology: Are there Synergies?
Basic Income, Poverty and Rural Livelihoods
Basic Income, the Commons, and Sovereign Wealth Funds: Is Public Inheritance an emerging issue?
Basic Income Pilots: Opportunities and Limits
Basic Income and Political Action: What does it take to transform an Idea into Policy?
Basic Income and Corporate Philanthropy: Is Basic Income a better paradigm and way forward?
Basic Income and Children
Basic Income and Mental Health
Basic Income and Intentional Communities: What does this Experience Teach us?
There will also be a Short Films Exhibition, organized in partnership with Grundeinkommen Television (Gtv), which a is part of the Initiative Grundeinkommen, a pioneering civil society initiative established in 2008. Guidelines for submission:
The length of the Film should be below 15 minutes;
Your film should be made in 2018 or 2019 and be shown for the first time to a wider audience at the Congress;
The film should be in English or with English subtitles;
Entries should reach latest by 1st June 2019;
A committee appointed by INBI will select the entries for exhibition at the Congress;
Two of these selected films will be jointly rewarded INBI Short Film Prize of 500 US Dollars each.
For further information and to submit films, please contact Enno Schmidt, Chair of the Committee. ennoschmidt@me.com.
General registrations can be made here. For paper abstract submission (in MS Word document between 300 and 500 words), please email to: 19biencongress.india@gmail.com.
Milton Friedman once gave a lecture in which he demonstrated, in a very particular logic, that the so-called “free lunch” was a myth. The origin of the term is unknown, but in early twentieth century it was already in use. Since then it has been so frequently employed that people have been explaining and rationalizing over it up to the present. In physics, to do something – which is called “work” – is to spend energy, and so, physically speaking, there is nothing ever for “free” (free from some energy usage). However, in economics, “free”, and particularly the “free lunch” term refers to an opportunity cost that always exists, because the human imagination is infinite (at least in possibilities), and the Earth resources are limited. So, Friedman’s logic is that there will never be a “free lunch” because spending money somewhere always takes money away from something else (the opportunity cost). Others believe, however, that these “costs” and the inability to provide “free lunch” is only a reflex of a scarcity mentality that, for instance, considers that money – an imaginary construct – is finite and that its management amounts to a zero-sum game (if I win, you lose). An alternative belief is that, while acknowledging that physical resources are scarce (Earth is a finite planet), their distribution can be made available to everyone, and we could be living in a “free lunch society”, if only we shifted our mentality of scarcity to one of abundance, and generously shared those resources among every human being on Earth.
Given this introduction of the “free lunch” dilemma and what could be the transformation of our way of life into a “free lunch society”, Christian Tod, an Austrian economist and filmmaker intelligently used the term to name his most recent production: “Free lunch society”. The film is due to come out on iTunes on January 22th 2019 and on DVD on February 5th 2019. Previously, a short version of the film (50 min.) had already been presented at the Basic Income Earth Network’s (BIEN) Conference at Tampere, Finland, last August 2018.
The movie is composed as a documentary, featuring interviews, animation and film footage from all over the world, and announces itself as follows:
“What would you do if your income were taken care of? Just a few years ago, an unconditional basic income was considered a pipe dream. Today, this utopia is more imaginable than ever before. FREE LUNCH SOCIETY provides background information about this idea and searches for explanations, possibilities and experiences regarding its implementation.
Globalization, automation, Donald Trump. The middle class is falling apart, but we hear more talk about the causes than about solutions. From Alaska’s oil fields to the Canadian prairie, from Washington’s think tanks to Namibian steppes, FREE LUNCH SOCIETY takes us on a grand journey to answer one of the most crucial questions of our times.”
The Call for Papers for the 19th Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, in Hyderabad, India, has been released. From the 22nd through the 25th of August 2019, scholars, community organizers and artists are invited to make presentations pertaining to any of the following thematic areas. The abstracts (maximum 500 words) must reach the Local Organizing Committee by February 25th 2019. Please mail your abstracts (in MS Word document between 300 and 500 words) to: 19biencongress.india@gmail.com.
Thematic areas:
1. Ideological Perspectives on Basic Income
2. Basic Income, Unpaid Work and Women in the Informal Economy
3. Basic Income in Development Aid Debate: Is there a Paradigm-shift?
4. Religious Perspectives on Basic Income
5. Basic Income as a Foundation of a Caring Economy and Society?
6. What forms of Freedom and What kind of Community Life does Basic Income promote?
7. Basic Income and Blockchain Technology: Are there Synergies?
8. Basic Income, Poverty and Rural Livelihoods
9. Basic Income, the Commons, and Sovereign Wealth Funds: Is Public Inheritance an emerging issue?
10. Basic Income Pilots: Opportunities and Limits
11. Basic Income and Political Action: What does it take to transform an Idea into Policy?
12. Basic Income and Corporate Philanthropy: Is Basic Income a better paradigm and way forward?
13. Basic Income and Children
14. Basic Income and Mental Health
15. Basic Income and Intentional Communities: What does this Experience Teach us?
Congress Theme: Basic Income as Freedom and
Development
The theme of the Congress is ‘Basic Income as Freedom and Development’. Basic Income is an idea that is evoking curiosity and attention of people from a wide variety of national and cultural contexts, from leaders of different socio-political domains. Irrespective of the generic meaning that we attempt to give it, the groundswell that we witness today is producing its own local meanings. Each of these meanings seems to emerge from its own unique contextual starting point. The year 2019 is virtually being declared as the ‘Year of the Basic Income’, because the idea is reverberating across the world.
In this chaotic multiple renderings and interpretations, we observe that Basic Income is being seen both as Freedom and Development. These two notions are not mutually exclusive or distinctively apart, as often they are made out to be. Development ideally ought to lead to Freedom, and equally so the other way round. In certain contexts, the immediate appeal of the idea of Basic Income seems to be ‘Development’ in terms of addressing hunger and other forms of deprivation, access to education and healthcare. In other contexts, the immediacy may be felt as Freedom from alienating jobs that most of us are forced to do for a living. In either case, what emerges is that an unconditional Basic Income is seen as having tremendous potential to liberate us from the new forms of slavery that the current phase of capitalist economy subjects us to.
BIEN Civic Forum
The Congress will be held for four days. The first day, on the 22nd August, will be India Day which is being organised under the new BIEN initiative Civic Forum. The deliberations of this day will focus on the Basic Income debate and policy initiatives and the ground level experience in India. All the delegates are encouraged to attend the India Day. The main Congress will be inaugurated on 23rd morning and will conclude at 2:45 pm on 25th August 2019. The General assembly of BIEN will be convened at 3 pm on the 25th August 2019.
Registration of Delegates Those who wish to attend the Congress, please register by filling out the online form. The Delegate Fee structure is as follows:
Type of Fee
In Euro
In US Dollars
Solidarity Fee
200 and above
229
Regular Fee
125
143
Delegates from low-income countries
50
57
Delegates from low-income countries are encouraged to attend the Congress, and this fee is at a highly subsidized rate. Those who can afford to pay, please consider opting for Solidarity Fee of 200 Euros and above. Those who have institutional support, please opt for Regular Fee even if from low-income countries.
Basic Income is a radically different and yet elegantly simple notion that has been around for decades: all citizens should have an income and be allowed to maintain their dignity, simply because they are citizens in a society that is prospering. In social policy terms, this idea can be put into action by giving unconditional cash payments to citizens. In the 60s and 70s, there were several long-term Basic Income policy experiments in the USA and Canada. The goal of these experiments at the time was to see if giving people money would be a disincentive to workforce participation. In the end, there was only a very small reduction of work participation among the subjects. In the USA women worked fewer hours per week, an understandable consequence is given that there were on average 4 children per family in the study group. Young men in Canada reduced their work participation, but high school completion rate increased, with stipends enabling the pursuit of higher levels of education. Furthermore, there was an increase in divorce rates, which was the main motivator to take BasicIncome off the table at the time, but looking back seems like it was not such a bad result, Basic Income was shown to empowered women in difficult situations to be able to exit those situations.
BasicIncome has recently returned to vogue, and Canada was, until recently, conducting an experiment in the province of Ontario, led by the of the Liberal government. It was a pilot program guaranteeing an income to 4000recipients in the region an and was supposed to last three years, but it was abruptly canceled in July 31st 2018, by the newly elected Ford administration. There have been many reactions to the cancellationof this pilot program, including a class action suit filed by fourLindsey residents, represented by lawyer Mike Perry. The Basic Incomerecipients in this class action are arguing that they “made plans to improvetheir lives when they signed up for the pilot in April last year, providing thegovernment with detailed personal information to be approved and expecting thepilot to run its three-year term.” It also seems like a breach of basic socialresearch ethics and complaints have been filed to Veritas, the company the previous government hired to ensure ethical standards are metin the conduct of research involving human beings.
On the aftermath of the cancelation, and as a reaction to it, photographer JessieGolem, also a recipient in the experiment, started a portrait series named Humans of Basic Income, depicting photos of Basic Income recipients displaying placards with their stories handwritten on them. We spoke to Jessie about her experience as a recipient of the Ontario Basic Income trial and about her own experience as a recipient and her perspective on the Basic Income pilot that gave rise to her portrait series.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
I
grew up in the small town of Hanover, Ontario. I’m quite lucky and privileged
that I’m actually quite close with my family and had a stable childhood. My
parents are still together, and I grew up in the same house and attended the
same elementary school and high school. We were not rich, but we were always
provided for, and my childhood was happy, stable and peaceful. I went to school
at University of Waterloo, majoring in Religious Studies. I was also quite
religious at the time and lived at a bible college in Kitchener, but I don’t consider
myself religious anymore, and actually have an article published on the
Huffington Post on the reasons behind that decision. Later, I moved to
Hamilton, and while in Hamilton I went to school at George Brown College in the
Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counselling and Advocacy program. I explored a
number of careers, including youth pastor, piano teacher (I’m a classical
pianist) and social worker, but I currently work as the Operations Manager at
Photographers Without Borders, and hoping to expand my career as a
photographer, storyteller, and writer.
What was your work life like before Basic Income?
I’ve had numerous jobs in my life. I have worked as a cleaning lady, I’ve worked in retail, I’ve ran kids programs and day camps and worked as a dog walker. I’ve always worked/volunteered for not-for-profits in different capacities my entire adult life. Prior to receiving Basic Income I was working as a dog walker in the mornings/afternoons, teaching piano in the evenings, and in the time in between, working at Photographers Without Borders, and working to book photography projects and grow my own freelance photography business. I had no free time. I often wouldn’t be able to get home to cook myself dinner, and I’d often find myself up until late in the night working on projects and applications.
What is Photographers Without Borders?
Photographers Without Borders (PWB) is an international non-profit that amplifies the stories of grassroots organizations all over the world by sending volunteer photographers and videographers to document the work they are doing. The organization is able to receive this footage to build their own capacity, while PWB also brings awareness to these issues through a robust social media, a print magazine and online magazine, and a video series. I have volunteered at PWB for two years, and we are on the brink of realizing some tremendous growth which would expand our capacity as an organization, and potentially offer paid positions to staff. BI gave me the time to devote to PWB full-time in order to realize that vision. Losing BI means I will have to reduce my capacity at PWB.
How did your plans get foiled by the cancelation?
I had plans to work full-time at pursuing photography and building my business to a point where it’s self-sustaining, as well as develop my capacity at PWB and help to grow the organization. I will now have to return to having multiple jobs.
Even though it was canceled, do you think that there were positive consequences for you personally from having participated in the program?
Yes. I have now experienced what living and pursuing photography full-time feels like, and I’m very excited about this life, and don’t want to return. I have used the cancellation to pursue a portrait series, and I believe this experience has made me bolder, and less afraid of taking risks in order to succeed. I threw myself into the portrait project without a lot of thought, andI’m lucky for all the miracles along the way that has kept this project alive. I’m less afraid of the consequences, and more passionate about amplifying the stories of the people I have met on this journey, who have become friends.
What do you say to critics who accuse you and others in the project of being “parasites”?
I believe this kind of dehumanizing language is extremely dangerous and opens up the opportunity for violence. With language such as “parasite” it strips a person of their humanity, saying they are only human if they contribute to the economy financially. If they are unable to do so, they aren’t human, they are parasites. In history, when dehumanizing language is used against a group of people, it allows for the justification of violence, because this person is seen as “the other” or “less than human” and therefore less of a person than the one holding the prejudice, and this allows for violence. It’s this dehumanizing language that has, historically, caused genocide and holocausts. Furthermore, this was a pilot project, and even those opposed to BI would benefit from the results of the project, so they can use the facts and data obtained to justify their opposition. And 70%of the people on the pilot project had/have jobs, myself included. Anyone who wasn’t working wasn’t doing so because they were lazy but do to physical and mental disabilities that prevented them from working.
Do you think a pilot that included more income levels and a more gradual take back rate could avoid this accusation?
I’m not sure. I think the stigma against people in poverty is only really growing, especially in this area where political views between the left and right are becoming so far divided. You still see name-calling and dehumanizing language used to describe people of opposing political views, and you see this from both liberal and conservative-minded people. It would be interesting to see what a pilot focused on a wider range of income could do and how it would affect people. I did like that Ontario focused on low-income people, because it was a study attempting to address and come up with a solution to a social service system in Ontario that I now know is deeply broken, and keeps people in poverty. It would be interesting to see a pilot focused on a wider range of incomes, however. A multi-faceted, nuanced approach would be really great to see, where different income levels in different areas, and different types ofpilots are examined. We do see this right now – there are Basic Income studiescurrently taking place in small communities and pockets all over the world.
What do you think is the main purpose of the pilots?
There are so many purposes for the pilots, but one of the bigger ones I see is that we need to examine the future of economics in our society, as the rise of AIand technology changes the future of work, and in many cases, increasingly replaces the need for human work. This is an economic change as big as the Industrial Revolution that will be realized in our lifetimes. Humans don’t need to work in a factory if a robot is doing the work, online banking has replaced the need for bank tellers, self-serve check-outs in grocery stores and kiosks in fast food restaurants have replaced cashiers, thus many industries which were so heavily reliant on human work are increasingly no longer needing humans. The question of how one works, and how one derives an income and contributes to the economy is a tremendous question to ask – it is imagining a new world. Increasingly, the issue of climate change and globalization will also affect the future of economics. A Universal Basic Income is just one idea, but it’s worth examining. Right now we are only in the stages of speculation, but research and pilot projects would be able to drive the conversation forward, answering important questions while unearthing new ones. The pilots can absolutely measure the cost benefits – how much money is saved in healthcare costs if people have access to good healthy food and don’t develop long-term health problems? What is the cost benefit if a person is avoiding committing crimes and the ensuing consequences because they have all of their basic needs taken care of? And I think it’s important to analyze different models of Basic Income because the economic needs of communities all over the world are vastly different from one another. I think what a Basic IncomeProgram in Ontario looks like can’t and shouldn’t look like what a Basic Income Program would look like in another country, or even in another part of Canada. Different areas have different economic needs, which is why I’m glad to see so many projects taking place all over the world that are trying out different models of Universal Basic Income.
In your opinion, was the pilot working in getting people to improve their situations, including your own experience?
Having a Basic Income improved my life. Everyone I’ve talked to were improving their lives, and these improvements were small, but noteworthy steps to living better lives out of poverty – lives with dignity. Small things like the ability to afford to buy new clothes, or buy healthier food at a nicer grocery store, or be able to pay bills on time. The amount was small – if someone wanted to use Basic Income as a disincentive to work, they could, however, they would not be living a nice life. It was enough to get a leg up out of poverty – move into safer housing, get a better job, and live better lives, contributing to the economy. The cost of poverty on a person’s mental wellbeing is staggering – the amount of mental energy it takes to survive will actually reduce a person’s IQ. If all their mental energy is concerned with how they will pay the next bills, where they will find food, how they will pay for health care, etc. there is no time for one to dream of bigger pursuits. I saw Basic Income buying people that precious time. To give that to someone, and then take it away with no warning, and little information, and no reason based in fact, is simply reprehensible.
*
The Basic Income movement is still going strong, despite the Ontario Pilot’s cancelation. In Canada, activists are fighting to take the pilot to a Federal level, and to finish the research that was started. At the time of the cancelation, there was no data analysed by the pilot, all we have are the stories of the recipients as told in Jessie’s portrait series and on a website called Basic Income Voices. These stories are powerful and provide a window into how Basic Income can bear positive, life-changing benefits for its beneficiaries. The future is here and the time to explore policy solutions is now.
The Green Party (Camhaontas Glas) has two members of the Dáil Éireann. If they gain more seats in the next election, they are considered a likely coalition partner in a future government.
