by Guest Contributor | Mar 15, 2022 | Opinion
Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes care of sustenance needs, and SESED (Figure 1), can complement UBI to achieve poverty alleviation. This will be through a small business enterprise, whose success is facilitated by SESED given the peace of mind that UBI provides.
Figure 1 – A Systemic Ecosystem for Socio-Economic Development (SESED)
The SESED is a network of interconnected interdependent small businesses operated by people who are being helped to uplift themselves from poverty. These ventures are initially funded by microloans availed from sponsors, through Fintech companies.
The success of the business is ensured by a strategy of “benefits for all” modus operandi. Thus, the vested interests of all stakeholders are procured upfront.
The access to credit and the success of the enterprise evolves into income generation, from which aspirations, such as education for children, good health by proper nourishment and peace of mind, etc., are shaped.
These aspirations create buying power, now that the funds for these are available.
Though these ventures are small, the overall increased aggregate demand will create a whirlpool in the sluggish economy of the present, and result in a broader, vibrant, and sustainable one.
A key feature for the success of the venture is the “System”. This essentially facilitates the end-to-end process, and whose main responsibilities are:
- Borrower Education – Financial Literacy, Business Acumen, Skills Development, Psychological Interventions, etc.
- Enable access to credit via an efficient income distribution system; e.g., an interface with the Fintech company, manual distribution of funds.
- Manage the Supply and Demand value chain – e.g., suppliers must also be consumers, and vice-versa, of the products of the enterprises as appropriate. This could be along the lines of the Japanese innovation of “Keiretsu”.
- Foster a vested interest from the sponsor in the success of the enterprise for a win-win relationship.
- Tailor local solutions – i.e., targeted business development and bottom-up innovation; e.g., the product could be made available in a cheaper one-time use package, as well the regular one.
- Mitigate the risk of loan default.
- Deal with the idiosyncrasies of the society – e.g., in most 3rd world countries bribes are a norm, and extortions can be present as well.
The late Professor C. K. Prahalad, together with Professor Stuart L. Hart urged corporations to note “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, and espoused “Eradicating Poverty Through Profits”.
It is thus that, not only is the primary outcome of poverty alleviation of UBI with SESED paramount, but they fall through benefits of 1) increased revenue for corporations due to the increased aggregate demand, and 2) the interest on the loans plus “fractional dividends” in the form of profits sharing for the sponsors, that stand out as unique, different and pragmatic in this model.
Thus, UBI with SESED will then be an “Auspicium Melioris Aevi” – an Augury of a Better Age.
M.Pandurangan
linkedin.com/in/mpandurangan
7 Mar 2022
References:
- Standing, Guy – “Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen”
- Ruskin, John – “Unto This Last”
- More, Thomas – “Utopia”
- Schumacher, E.F. – “Small is Beautiful”
- Prahalad, C. K. – “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits”
by Peter Knight | Mar 5, 2022 | News
Eight, a NGO that provides Unconditional monthly cash transfers to people in extreme poverty for two years, in collaboration with IPIS, the Belgian Development Cooperation, Fairphone, Umicore and Proximus, announces the expansion of its basic income pilot project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). From 2022 to 2026, following the first village that was onboarded in October 2021 in Lutala, the project will scale up in the same region (in the Kalima, Maniema province), providing the entire region with a basic income boost – or unconditional cash transfers – for two years.
Read more about the project expansion in this press release.
by Peter Knight | Feb 23, 2022 | Events, News
Unconditional basic income continues to be a subject of lively debate – both in academia and in the public and political spheres. From a philosophical and social science perspective, the questions it raises are: Would such an income increase our individual freedom? What impact would it have on fundamental forms of social esteem? And could it be consistent with notions of justice based on reciprocity? These systematic questions will be discussed at the conference, taking into account relevant historical and theoretical developments.
Conference website: https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/en/philosophie/basic-income
Conference Languages: English and German
Venue: The conference will be held online. Links will be sent after registration.
Registration: Participation in the conference is free. Please register by March 2, 2022 at
grundeinkommen2022@tu-braunschweig.de
Program:
March 3, 2022 (all times are CET – UTC+1)
11–11.30 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Gottfried Schweiger: Welcome
11.30 –12.40 Matilde Cazzola (Frankfurt am Main): Beyond Poverty and the Coercion of Work: Thomas Spence and the Redistribution of Quarterly Dividends
2–3.10 Silke Bothfeld (Bremen): Eignet sich ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen für die nachhaltige Förderung individueller Autonomie? Ein Kommentar aus der Perspektive der Sozialpolitikforschung
3.30–4.40 Jürgen Schupp (Berlin): Das 2021 gestartete Pilotprojekt Grundeinkommen in Deutschland: Zum Stellenwert sozialwissenschaftlicher Feldexperimente
5–6 Philippe Van Parijs (Louvain): Prospects and Challenges for an Unconditional Basic Income: A Conversation with Philippe Van Parijs
March 4, 2022
9.30–10.40 Malcom Torry (London): Basic Income: A Brief History of the Idea
10.50–12 Peter Sloman (Cambridge): Redistribution or Revolution? Basic Income and Radical Politics in Britain, c. 1918-1950
1–2.10 Olavi Kangas (Turku): Possibilities to Plan and Implement Large Scale Social Experiments – Some Lessons from the Finnish Basic Income Experiment
2.10–3 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Gottfried Schweiger: Final Discussion and Farewell
by Guy Standing | Jan 18, 2022 | Featured, Opinion
There are rare moments when a combination of threatening circumstances leads to a wonderful transformation that only a short time before would have been unimaginable. This year may be such a moment. The Republic of Korea could set an example to the world that would bring happiness to millions of Koreans, and to many more around the world.
The risks if politicians are too cautious are enormous. Before COVID-19, the global economy was already heading towards a crisis. For over three decades, more and more of the income and wealth were going to the owners of property, financial, physical, and “intellectual”. The commons, belonging to everybody, were being converted into the source of profits and rents. A new class, the precariat, was growing everywhere, suffering from multiple forms of insecurity, drifting deeper into debt. It was incredibly high debt – private, corporate, and public – that made the global economy uniquely fragile.
Meanwhile, the public across the world were realizing the threat posed by global warming and destruction of the environment. Nothing was being done. If that continues, life for our children and grandchildren will be impaired. And it is clear that mistreatment of nature has helped make this an era of pandemics. The COVID-19 outbreak is the sixth pandemic this century.
In these circumstances, policies that merely try to go back to the old normal will not work. We need a bold transformative vision, one of courage, one designed to give people basic economic and social security, one designed to make the economy work for society and every citizen, not just for the bankers and plutocracy, and one designed to revive the commons and our natural environment.
Jae-Myung Lee is campaigning for the Presidency in the March 2022 presidential election with an exciting and feasible strategy, based on a promise of a basic income for every Korean man and woman, paid equally, as a right, without conditions. It is affordable. What is important at this stage is not to set some ideal amount, but to be on the road towards living in a society in which everybody has enough on which to survive, even if they experience personal setbacks.
What makes the proposal for a basic income so profound is that Jae-Myung Lee has come from a humble background, knowing poverty and insecurity from his childhood. He understands two fundamentals. First, the income of every Korean is due to the efforts of all those Koreans who lived beforehand, and it is based on the commons, nature and resources that make up the country, which belong to all Koreans. Those who have gained from taking the commons, most of all, the land, owe it to all Koreans to share some of the gains. A modest Land Value Tax, or levy, is justifiable and fair, and should help fund the basic income.
He also understands that pollution and global warming must be combated by a carbon tax or eco-taxes. The rich cause more pollution than the poor, the poor experience the bad effects more than the rich, including bad health from exposure to poisonous air. So, the solution must include carbon taxes to discourage global warming and polluting activities. But by themselves such taxes would hit the poor harder, because the tax would amount to more of their income.
The only sensible solution is to guarantee that the revenue from eco-taxes will be recycled through a Commons Capital Fund to help pay for the basic income, as Carbon Dividends. The poor will gain, while society will be on the road to fighting global warming and ecological decay. A basic income will also encourage more care work and ecological work, rather than resource-depleting labor. It will stimulate the desirable form of economic growth.
The second fundamental Jae-Myung Lee and his advisers have understood is that basic security is essential for rational decision-making and mental health. There cannot be individual or societal resilience against pandemics or economic crises unless there is basic security, so that people can behave rationally rather than in desperation. Experiments have shown that a basic income improves mental health and the ability to make better decisions, for oneself, one’s family, and one’s community.
In the Korean edition of my book Plunder of the Commons, I paid respect to the ancient Korean ethos of hongik ingan, which helped found Korea in 2,333 BC. It expresses a historically-grounded wisdom that Koreans should be re-teaching the world in an era of self-centered individualism and consumption-driven “success”. It conveys the sense of not just sharing in benefits of production but sharing in the preservation and reproduction of a sense of community, our sense of participation and our relationships in and with nature. A basic income would pay respect to that ethos. Jae-Myung Lee should be commended for having pioneered it in Gyeonggi Province, and would set the country on a new progressive road if elected President on March 9.
——
A Korean translation of this article was published by Pressian – a political news website headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.
by Peter Knight | Nov 27, 2021 | News
The Denver Basic Income Project (DBIC) is the first major effort in the United States to study the impact of providing guaranteed income to individuals who are unhoused, as a means of accelerating the path toward stability. It was founded by Denver Colorado businessman and philanthropist Mark Donovan and seeded with $500,000 capital gains he made by selling his Tesla stock. DBIC has already raised an additional $3.3M on top of this to provide unconditional basic income to people experiencing homelessness in Denver, accompanied by a rigorous randomized control trial run by Denver University’s Center for Housing and Homelessness Research.
Donovan believes it is not necessary to wait for the government to come in and fix things, as Tesla has shown in the automotive industry. What is needed is to offer better solutions. Direct cash is increasingly seen as one of the most effective ways to fight poverty and economic inequality. DBIP plans to replicate its program in 20 more cities in 2022 and 200 in 2023.
Donovan recounts that by 2020 he was already familiar with the powerful efficacy of guaranteed income. Then he started to do a deeper dive into the literature and found astounding results like those of the New Leaf Project in Vancouver and the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. He believes the current social safety net in the United States is not only highly inefficient and ineffective, it is also demeaning and disrespectful to those it seeks to serve. The number of people who are unhoused is growing despite the enormous resources dedicated to this challenge. The concept of basic income appealed to him, as it acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inequalities built into our economic systems while also making a powerful statement of trust and respect to individuals it serves. It is a direct investment in people that has the power to not only alleviate enormous human suffering but also unleash massive amounts of latent potential. It also has the potential to be an enormous stimulus to the economy.
