by Karl Widerquist | Sep 17, 2015 | News
international basicincome week
International Basic Income Week from 2008 until today: How did it all start?
Basicincomeweek.org is finding out what is happening with Basic Income initiatives around the world, regarding International Basic Income Week and beyond.
The organization is talking with the people who brought International Basic Income Week to life and who have made it into the international event it is today. It all started with local events that everyone is invited to join.
Then Basic Income Week is talking with activists of countries taking part for the first time in 2015. Later on there will be interviews with initiatives that are otherwise significantly contributing to worldwide Unconditional Basic Income.
Basic Income Week has interviews with:
Further interviews to expect:
- 18th September: Enno Schmidt, Swiss Referendum campaign
- Pastor Diergaardt, Chairperson of BIG Coalition, Namibia
by Toru Yamamori | Sep 15, 2015 | News
Enno Schmidt, co-founder of the Swiss basic income initiative, made a film on Jae-Myeong Lee, the mayor of Seongnam City, talking his plan for ‘Youth Dividend’.
Jae-Myeong Lee wants to introduce a basic income for the young people in his city, a city of one million inhabitants, 30 km southeast of the capital Seoul. While he was working on this he heard from Prof. Kang Nam-Hoon, a pioneer of the basic income movement in South Korea, about the idea of an unconditional basic income. For Lee this idea is linked with democracy. He expects and hopes that Switzerland will take the first steps in this direction with the upcoming 2016 referendum. He said this would make it easier for other countries to follow and would be a big help for him as welll. The youth basic income in Seongnam City could be a first step in South Korea for further steps towards the introduction of an unconditional basic income for everyone in the country.
Geum Min and Enno Schmidt interviewed the mayor on 19th June 2015, during the International Basic Income Conference in Seoul. This was held as a prelude to the next Basic Income Earth Network Congress, to be held summer 2016 in Seoul.
A film by Enno Schmidt, 8 Min.
In Korean with English subtitles.
English translation by Ji-Young Moon and Barb Jacobson
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 22, 2015 | News
The Launch of Basic Income Week 2015
UBI-Europe recently published the Call for Participation for this year’s Basic Income Week:
https://basicincomeweek.org/
The 8th international action week for basic income is scheduled to run from September 14–20, 2015. The European network invites basic income groups and activists around the world to participate with events and actions with the common aim of creating visibility for and stimulating public discussion about unconditional basic income.
“A Safety Net for Life”
In the Call for Participation the activists announce that “we are facing multiple crises which threaten our lives as individuals as well as life as humankind as a whole. These crises – social, ecological and financial – are being experienced in a myriad of different ways around the world.”
Therefore, for this year’s Basic Income Week, they want “to draw attention to Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) as a possible ‘Safety Net for Life’ which leaves no one behind.”
Looking back
In 2014, 11 countries (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK) participated in the 7th Basic Income Week. Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) contributed to the week’s further globalisation by organising a series of online events with international basic income experts and activists. UBI-Europe hopes that this year’s 8th International Basic Income Week will become even more global and expands further beyond Europe.
Call for Participation
You can get in touch with your regional or international coordination team, publish the call for participation in your language and announce events in your region via the contact form: https://basicincomeweek.org/contact-form/
The Launch of Basic Income Week 2015
by Jenna van Draanen | Jun 15, 2015 | News
Founding members of the National Campaign for the RBI.
With all of the recent activity in Switzerland on basic income and the upcoming vote on the national basic income initiative, a national body is needed to coordinate communication and to educate Swiss citizens on Basic Income. This article describes the group that was launched to meet this need, the National Campaign for Unconditional Basic Income.
Ralph Kundig, “La campagne nationale pour le revenu de base inconditionnel est lancée” [ A National Campaign for Basic Income is Launched] . Basic Income Earth Network Switzerland. May 24, 2015
by Francisco Nobrega | Jun 12, 2015 | Opinion
The debate and protests over the importance of an unconditional basic income policy for our time have been spreading worldwide and gathering momentum. Here in Brazil we keep an open ear due to the success of conditional transfer policies (The Bolsa Família program) and also because we have a moot 2004 law that says that such universal and unconditional money transfer is to be inaugurated in Brazil, “in steps”. Most view Bolsa Família as one such “step”. I have been following the idea for over five years together with other activists, trying to implement a basic income pilot program here, in a small city. This is a distilled reflection of my current view about how to make utopia turn into a “protopia”, a term proposed by Kevin Kelly as a “gradual improvement in humanity” or a viable utopia.
The camp of supporters in the world is diverse and we can see two distinct and extreme interpretations of the idea:
One group sees basic income as a way to increase government through social welfare and “eliminate” work that they see as exploitative and envision complete maintenance of social services and centralized decisions, besides the monthly unconditional grant, independent from work.
Another group embrace basic income as a tool to drastically reduce government, replacing the social programs with the monthly grant independent of work.
These polarized views also disclose an important characteristic of the idea: it attracts people from the entire political spectrum, something that certainly will help future implementation. There is another surprising coincidence in all basic income visions reported in writing and video: the unanimous presentation of what I will call the “classical model”: the monthly grant will be bestowed upon all: rich, middle-class, poor and unemployed. I seldom met anyone who dared to challenge the idea of rewarding people with economic means and a job. To me this is in contrast with was in fact a strategy to eliminate poverty and the attached main evil of social welfare programs: the “poverty trap”. This is a phenomenon in which you punish economic success by removing the benefit as soon as someone is employed or becomes an entrepreneur. The poverty trap creates an incentive to stay put and avoid the risk of relinquishing the subsidy and face the competitive world outside.
A basic income payment is a right for everyone without a decent earning, whatever the reason. The logical justification is that society as a whole has been unable to provide opportunities for everyone either as an entrepreneur or an employee with the government or the private sector. Additionally the increasing efficiency in production, and the great advances in microelectronics, artificial intelligence and robotics are on the way to eliminating jobs on a massive scale. Brynjolfsson and McFee1 have shown that notwithstanding a continuous rise in productivity, the last two decades exhibit a marked reduction in job opportunities. Frey and Osborne2 released a very interesting study of 702 occupations, identifying many that are on the road to extinction due to the modern trends mentioned. In the US the authors estimate that 47% of jobs are at risk of being automated within a decade or two. This will add to the jobs already lost by “off-shoring” manufactories. Also a fundamental psychological barrier exists and resides in the deeply engrained notion that income has to be linked to work. People will have to overcome this notion just as we had to overcome certain prejudices in the recent past related to slavery, torture and the rights of women and minorities, finally embracing solidarity in the economic realm.
It is our duty as a civilized society to provide a monthly grant that will allow those without means to provide for their basic needs. But the classical model of basic income is unjust in handing over cash to those who are well off. This practice could be acceptable if we suppose that a given population was living within the same level of their means. Then the grant would be a benefit equal to all. In all countries we have a centuries-old history of inequality. In Switzerland just about one citizen in 13 is poor and needs help from the state. In Brazil about one-quarter of the population is poor and are presently helped by the Bolsa Família program. The cost of benefiting everyone will be a formidable barrier to implement the idea besides being unjust. The classical model was probably born out of our prejudice against people receiving money without pay. Apparently to appease the well off, the most indignant against giving “money for doing nothing”, the classical model wants to “buy” them as beneficiaries of the idea. But we have to give cash “for doing nothing” because the affluent societies of today have to be responsible for the lack of job opportunities. Giving cash to the needy and letting them choose what to do with it has been shown to be not only just but also cost effective. Among other pilot experiments like the one in India3 it is noteworthy to remember the success of giving cash to homeless people in London4 or home for the homeless in Utah5. The excellent results cost less than the usual city expenses for caring for the homeless in both cases. The winning GiveDirectly initiative in Kenia and Uganda also reinforces the idea of addressing the poor. Many other experiments exist with excellent results.
The social services network present in all countries should be used. The first measure I propose, considering Brazil, is to remove all conditionalities linked to Bolsa Família or to unemployment benefits. The bureaucracy should analyze requests from the needy, families or individuals without income. After entering the monthly grant system the newcomer would have a generous time interval (years) before the grant expires. This longer interval will remove the “poverty trap” long enough for progress out of the grant system. In case a lack of income remains, the person/family will apply, near the end of the allotted time, to stay in the system. So whoever is in need will be helped and whoever falls into economic need will be supported. The amount paid should be enough for the basic needs of the person/family. Recipients who want to advance economically will pursue whatever full or part-time jobs are available or even start a business. The basic monthly cash should be followed with provisions of communal facilities for support and education for the beneficiaries whenever appropriate. In parallel, some of the suggestions exposed6 in the “Get America Working!” study could be implemented to reduce the cost of having workers by means of a tax rearrangement that would drastically shorten the current payroll expenses and many more jobs could be created.
Reducing economic uncertainty will have multiple benefits for society: the mental health value of reducing the anxiety and stress linked to insecurity, the social environment will be safer, and most importantly, the poverty trap will be neutralized, unleashing the creative potential of men and women.
Francisco G. Nóbrega
MD, PhD, is President of the Municipal Council for the Citizen’s Basic Income in the city of Santo Antonio do Pinhal, SP, Brazil. francisco.nobrega@gmail.com
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. I thank Jim Hesson for improving the English and suggestions by him and Marina P. Nobrega.
1- Race Against the Machine – how the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McFee, 2011, Digital Frontier Press, Mass, USA
2- The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization? Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013, https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
3- Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India. Sarath Davala, Renana Jhabvala, Soumya Kapoor Mehta, and Guy Standing. New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing India, December 2014.
4- The London experiment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-money-might-be-the-best-way-to-end-poverty/2013/12/29/679c8344-5ec8-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html
5- The Utah experiment: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free
6- Get America Working! site: https://www.getamericaworking.org
