by Kate McFarland | Sep 17, 2017 | News
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
- The definition and characteristics of a Basic Income
- The history of Basic Income
- The anatomy of a global debate
Part II: The effects of Basic Income
- Employment market effects
- Social effects
- Economic effects
- Ecological effects
- Gender effects
Part III: Implementation of Basic Income
- The anatomy of a Basic Income scheme
- The administration of a Basic Income scheme
- Costings for Basic Income
- The framing of Basic Income
- The feasibility of Basic Income
- Alternatives to Basic Income
- The funding of Basic Income
- The implementation of a Basic Income scheme
- Objections to Basic Income
- An illustrative Basic Income scheme
Part IV: Pilot projects and other experiments
- Canada and the USA
- Brazil
- Iran
- Namibia
- India
- Switzerland
- Finland
- The Netherlands
Part V: The political economy of Basic Income
- Libertarian arguments for Basic Income
- Left wing arguments for Basic Income
- Neoliberal arguments for Basic Income
- Human rights arguments for Basic Income
- The justice of Basic Income
- The ethics of Basic Income
Blank book photo CC BY 2.0 kate hiscock
by Kate McFarland | Sep 11, 2017 | News
The 10th annual international Basic Income Week will be September 18 to 24.
Basic income organizations throughout the world have organized events and activities in honor of the advocacy and awareness week. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
- In Canada, BIEN’s affiliate Basic Income Canada Network, is collecting answers to the question “How might a Basic Income Guarantee affect your life and/or your loved ones?” to compile and send to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other federal cabinet members. Responses will be sent during Basic Income Week.
- In Germany, political comedian and basic income supporter Anny Hartmann will deliver a series of performances of her routine “NoLobby is perfect!”. Basic Income Week advertises “Grundeinkommen inside!” in describing her solo show.
- BIEN’s Dutch affiliate, Vereniging Basisinkomen (VBi), is hosting a workshop on the first day of Basic Income Week, featuring talks by VBi chairperson Alexander de Roo, independent researcher Sjir Hoeijmakers (who was an advisor for the Dutch social assistance experiments), and others.
- In Melbourne, Australia, the Kevin Club will host “A Conversation About Basic Income”, in which supporters of the idea will gather to discuss the possibilities for basic income in Australia.
- Rutger Bregman will present his book Utopia for Realists in Oslo, Norway, where he will also join a panel discussion on basic income.
- In Denmark, Erik Christensen (Aalborg University) will hold a presentation of his new book, På vej til borgerløn (“On the way to basic income”) and, on the following day, debate “Basic Income: Emancipation or Cost-Savings Measure?” with Kristian Kongshøj, a postdoc in political science at Aalborg.
- In Brussels, Belgium, a debate will be held between representatives across the political spectrum–Liberals, Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Greens–who profess “a minimum of sympathy” for basic income. Although the debaters all claim to be sympathetic to basic income, one question at stake in the debate is whether these individuals of diverse political views are really talking about the same concept when they speak of “basic income”.
Interested individuals may subscribe the calendar on the official site of Basic Income Week to see new events as they are added, and interested groups may add new events to be seen.
Basic Income Week is independently organized and not affiliated with BIEN, although many BIEN affiliates choose to participate. (In fact, Basic Income Week defines ‘basic income’ in a stricter manner than BIEN; Basic Income Week’s definition, unlike BIEN’s, stipulates that a basic income must, by definition, be high enough in amount to “prevent material poverty and provide the opportunity to participate in society and to live in dignity”.)
Photo: “Globes” CC BY 2.0 Jayel Aheram
by Sara Bizarro | Sep 10, 2017 | News
On August 29, 2017, the Roosevelt Institute released a report where researchers Michalis Nikiforos, Marshall Steinbaum, Gennaro Zezza model the macroeconomic effects of implementing Basic Income. (Marshall Steinbaum is a Research Director and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Michalis Nikiforos and Gennaro Zezza are both associated with the Levy Institute.)
The Roosevelt Institute, following the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, presents itself as re-imagining “America as it should be: a place where hard work is rewarded, everyone participates, and everyone enjoys a fair share of our collective prosperity”, and as building a “new economic and political system: one built by the many for the good of all”.
The report presented by the Roosevelt Institute evaluates three different variations of Basic Income, $1000 a month to all adults, $500 a month to all adults, and a $250 a month child allowance. The researchers also analyzed two different types of funding, increasing the federal debt and increasing taxes on households. The model is designed considering an eight year time period and Basic Income is progressively introduced throughout that period.
From their models of the three scenarios, the researchers conclude that, if funded by increasing the federal debt, each Basic Income policy would have a result of economic growth, the $250 child allowance would increase the GDP by 0.79%, while the $1,000 per adult would increase the GDP by 12.56%. When the Basic Income is financed by household taxes, the model forecasts no effect on the economy if the program was simply giving “ with one hand what it takes away with the other”. However, if the model is adapted using what the researchers call a “distributional model”, it forecasts a beneficial effect on economic growth. As the researchers describe it, “the distributional model incorporates the idea that an extra dollar in the hands of lower income households leads to higher spending. In other words, the households that pay more in taxes than they receive in cash assistance have a low propensity to consume, and those that receive more in assistance than they pay in taxes have a high propensity to consume.” The general idea is that lower income brackets tend to spend everything they earn, therefore consuming more, and higher income brackets tend to save part of their earnings, therefore, consuming less in relation to their potential as consumers. Therefore, if you take from the rich to give to the poor, the money will be flowing more than when it is simply accumulated by the few, and in this way, the economy will grow. The researchers (and this is the official position of the Roosevelt Institute as well) assume that our economy is “not currently operating near potential output” and this is so partly because of current gaping inequality, which is “one of the main reasons why the US economy faces the prospect of secular stagnation”.
Besides assuming that the economy could be preforming better, the model used also incorporates two microeconomic assumptions: “(1) unconditional cash transfers do not reduce household labor supply; and (2) increasing government revenue by increasing taxes levied on households does not change household behavior.” These assumptions have been promptly criticized in the media. However, the researchers themselves are aware that the assumptions are contentious, and have thus sought to establish them with evidence. They base assumption (1) on a survey of experiments done by Ionana Marinescu in a paper entitled “No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Tax Transfer Programs” that estimates the microeconomic behavioral impact, using several experimental designs, results in labor supply remaining unchanged. Regarding assumption (2), the idea that increasing taxes does not change household behavior, the researchers assume that since the tax increase is progressive, the most affected households are the higher income brackets who tend to save and “hoard” money, so to speak, so they would save less but not change their consuming behavior in a drastic way. In order to justify this assumption, they use data from the Congressional Budget Office.
The report concludes that the researchers’ aim is not to have the final word on how to model the macroeconomic impacts of Basic Income but, instead, simply to have applied a valid model, which has done a reasonably good job of explaining macroeconomic effects so far, and used it to predict the effects of three Basic Income variations; on this model, the introduction of a Basic Income with a distributional component would mostly result in economic growth.
More Information:
Michalis Nikiforos, Marshall Steinbaum, Gennaro Zezza, “Modeling the Macroeconomic Effects of a Universal Basic Income”, The Roosevelt Institute, August 29th, 2017
Rakeen Mabud, Felicia Wong, “Starting the Conversation: The Economics of a Universal Basic Income”, The Roosevelt Institute, August 31st, 2017
“The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013”, Congressional Budget Office, 2016
Ioana Marinescu, “No Strings Attached The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs”, The Roosevelt Institute, May 11th, 2017
by Kate McFarland | Aug 31, 2017 | News
Nature Needs More, a wildlife conservation group based in Australia, is currently investigating the potential of basic income to help curb illegal hunting.
Founded in 2013 under the name Breaking The Brand, the group’s first advocacy and educational campaigns focused on curbing the demand for the products of illegal hunting, such as rhinoceros horns. As its work progressed, however, Breaking The Brand realized that its demand reduction campaigns could not be sufficient to stop illegal wildlife trade; successful wildlife conservation “needs more”.
Now called Nature Needs More, the organization is exploring new strategies, including a basic income pilot project designed to measure its effects on hunting and wildlife conservation.
Elephants in Namibia, CC BY-NC 2.0 Frans Vandewalle
Nature Needs More is inspired in part by the Basic Income Grant Pilot Project conducted in 2008 in the Namibian town of Otjivero. Prior to the introduction of the basic income grant, the local police station commander told researchers that poaching was the most common criminal activity, stating, “Poverty and unemployment are the reasons for these criminal activities. Otjivero is a tiny place and there is no source of income there. Most people hunt or poach just for survival.” In 2007, 20 instances of illegal hunting and trespassing were recorded between January 15 and October 31. In 2008, however, after the introduction of the basic income pilot, the count fell to only one instance during the same time period.
As Nature Needs More notes on its website, current basic income experiments–such as the 12-year randomized control trial that the non-profit GiveDirectly is due to launch in rural Kenya in September–are not linked to conservation outcomes.
Thus, the organization is considering the possibility of launching its own basic income experiment within the next two years.
Describing its hypothesis, Nature Needs More states, “Financial security would not only mean less poaching for food [and] less illegal harvesting … but would [also] mean wildlife trafficking syndicates would have less leverage to recruit poachers from the impoverished communities neighbouring key conservation areas.”
The organization is also exploring whether a basic income might help conservation areas convert to ecotourism as a revenue source.
Reviewed by Caroline Pearce
Rhino photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Martin Heigan
by Florie Barnhoorn | Aug 28, 2017 | News
As the social assistance experiments in several Dutch municipalities will begin this fall, Studium Generale of Utrecht University has organized an event dedicated to ‘Free Money‘.
Studium Generale is a university’s public platform for knowledge sharing and reflection by organizing lectures, seminars and other activities aimed at students and the general public. Entrance is always free and accessible without reservation.
In the Netherlands, municipalities are responsible for the provision of tailor-made benefits to anyone who has insufficient means to support him or herself, and for achieving the purpose of the Participation Act, that is, making recipients independent from social assistance. Several municipalities are conducting two-year experiments, in the context of which they have the option of implementing social assistance regulations in an alternative way.
Each experiment will include at least three treatment groups, who are subjected to various regimes, and a control group. The restrictiveness of obligations between the groups will vary, from a group which has fewer obligations imposed on it to a group which is even more intensively supervised. In addition, participants in a third treatment group may retain a limited amount of their income from work on top of their payments. See the links at the bottom of this article for more details.
Researchers of Utrecht University, one of the four universities that will supervise the experiments scientifically, have been critical about the design of the pilots because of its limited scope and complicated nature.
The experiments, as they are proposed now, raise a number of questions, such as: why don’t we all give a basic income? Is it too expensive, or are there any other objections?
Rutger Bregman (The Correspondent) and Professor Ingrid Robeyns (political philosopher and economist at Utrecht University) will address these issues during the “Free Money” event on October 25, 2017.
Rutger Bregman has written several books on ‘Free Money’ — for instance, Utopia for Realists — and was one of the speakers at TED2017 in Vancouver last April.
Ingrid Robeyns holds the chair in Ethics of Institutions. In her teaching she focuses on normative and applied ethics and (normative) political philosophy. She has been teaching about justice theories and economic ethics at the masters level in recent years. In her own research, Robeyns addresses a number of normative issues related to demography, gender, family, and institutional economy. Robeyns writes for the English-language group blog Crooked Timber and occasionally on her own site Buiten Categorie. She will also be one of the speakers during BIEN’s 17th Congress next September in Portugal.
The event will take place on October 25, 2017. The language is Dutch. Those interested are invited to join the discussion on Facebook event. For more details, see here.
Previous information on social assistance experiments in The Netherlands:
Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: Amsterdam on collision course over social assistance experiments” (August 5, 2017).
Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: All that’s left is the action. Where do we stand with the experiments?” (June 2, 2017).
Kate McFarland, “The Netherlands: Social Assistance Experiments Under Review” (May 9, 2017).
Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: Design of BI Experiments Proposed” (October 26, 2016).
Credit Picture Flickr.com CC Ealasaid.
Thanks to Kate McFarland for reviewing this article.
