by Kate McFarland | Oct 4, 2016 | News
BIEN co-founder Guy Standing will be speaking on basic income and the precariat at Oktoberdans–a well-regarded contemporary dance festival held biennially in Norway–on October 25.
Held every two years, Norway’s Oktoberdans is an internationally-regarded contemporary dance festival. The eleventh Oktoberdans will be held in Bergen from October 20-29, 2016.
Oktoberdans incorporates occasional events falling outside the usual scope of dance and performance art. This year, in connection with the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Moore’s Utopia, the festival will include a workshop called “Changing Utopia”, featuring six speakers over the course of three days (October 25-27).
A utopia is defined as a “non-place” and is itself impossible. Yet it is a concept most of us can relate to; the ultimate goal, something to strive for. Is it part of human nature to always long for the next, something better? Can this urge explain why we, as a species, have come to a point in our technological development where we are beginning to question if we are making the human workforce unnecessary?
Is it viable to argue that the discussion about what we want with our world has stopped? Is it possible to discuss a utopia for community and a utopia for the individual in the same breath? …
In this discursive program we will plunge fearlessly into the above-mentioned questions, hoping to generate new perspectives for artists, students, and a general audience attending Oktoberdans 2016.
The opening speaker on the first day will be economist Guy Standing, a co-founder and honorary co-president of BIEN. Standing will speak about the “precariat revolt” anticipated in his latest book, The Corruption of Capitalism. Specifically, he will explain what this revolt entails with respect to “reversing the trends of insecurity, inequality and the growth of the precariat.”
Rune Salomonsen, an organizer of the workshop, states that the organizers asked Standing to focus on his “politics of paradise”. Explaining the decision to invite a researcher and advocate of basic income, Salomonsen says,
The subject of basic income needs definitely a more frequent highlighting within the art field, but then again this subject is of universal importance, and this utopia as we now call it, has other important ingredients in addition to the basic income, it involves essential democratic structures.
Salomonsen mentions philosopher Jacques Rancière’s speech at the 2004 Summer Academy in Frankfurt as a precedent in which a thinker from outside the arts world delivered a presentation at major arts conference to great results. In this case, Rancière’s speech led to his book The Emancipated Spectator, which has become influential in both philosophy and the arts (especially performance art).
To enhance the dramaturgical elements of the presentation, the organizers have asked Standing to deliver his speech without printed notes and stand atop two Euro-pallets–creating a setting like a Speaker’s Corner.
Other speakers at Changing Utopia include Norwegian journalist Linn Stalsberg, Swiss artist Christophe Meierhans (who “showcased a complete political system” for a recent performance), and Wolfgang Heuer of the Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin.
At the time of this writing, two speakers have yet to be announced (although they are specified to be “very exciting”).
BIT Teatergarasjen presents the Changing Utopia seminar in collaboration with House on Fire.
For more information, see the homepage of the 2016 Oktoberdans and the page for the Changing Utopia seminar.
Information, photo, and proofreading from Rune Salomonsen (Bit Teatergarasjen).
by Kate McFarland | Sep 26, 2016 | News
On September 9, the New South Wales Fabians hosted a discussion of universal basic income in Haymarket.
The event featured a lineup of three speakers. First, Ben Spies-Butcher (Department of Sociology at Macquarie University) argued that Australia should pursue a universal basic income as a way to provide individuals with more freedom and control over their own lives and work. Next, Peter Whiteford (Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University) outlined the cost of a UBI. Finally, Louise Tarrant (formerly of United Voice) laid out many of the pros and cons of the policy. The three individual speeches were followed by the question and answer session with the audience.
About 80 to 90 people attended the event, which had been widely publicized on social media. Lachlan Drummond, president of the NSW Fabians, states that this crowd was the largest that the group has seen at any of its events over the past three years.
Among the unexpected attendees were two Italian members of the Five Star movement, who video-recorded the entire event:
The NWS Fabians have also released an audio-recording of the event as a podcast.
Drummond explains that several factors prompted the NSW Fabians to organize and host the event. First, the Fabians were interested in opening discussion of UBI simply because it is a “big transformative economic idea” that is already being talked about by the British Labour Party and some think tanks in the UK, as well as by other groups in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. Second, the group saw a gap in Australian political discussion surrounding UBI:
We’ve seen some far-left and even some right wing groups talking about it here in Australia but none on what we might call the “mainstream centre left”. We wanted to help push that debate along. We know there are people in both the Greens and the ALP [Australian Labor Party] who are keen on the idea, but as yet we hadn’t seen one event where everyone was all brought together to discuss it.
Third, Drummond notes that many members of the Fabians are personally undecided on the issue of UBI–and yet, previously, UBI had never been given a fair hearing at any NSW Fabians event. When previous guest speakers had broached the issue, their comments were negative and dismissive. Notably, at a March event on The Future of Work, Dr. Victor Quirk of the University of Newcastle spoke against UBI in favor of a return to full employment.
Not content with such a swift rejection of UBI, Drummond said that the NSW Fabians “wanted to look at the policy in a systematic way–to go through the positives and negatives, to look at the numbers, and the political realities, and whether pilot studies have shown it to actually work”.
According to Drummond, the main goal of the event was to leave the audience better informed about the issues surrounding UBI–both moral and practical–and that, by this measure, the event was a “big success”:
I think when you see a big progressive idea like this, it can be easy to jump on it and say it’s a great idea without knowing the arguments and practicalities (or even some potential alternatives).
Ben Spies-Butcher was great on the moral arguments, and how it should interact with other parts of the welfare system. Peter Whiteford gave us some useful numbers on how much it would cost and what pilot studies had actually discovered. Louise Tarrant was also very clear headed on the positives and negatives, both practical, economic and political.
We also had great impromptu contributions from Eva Cox on shorter working hours, and Luke Whitington who rebutted the argument about inflation by stating we are currently in a deflationary environment, and by outlining some creative and progressive ways it could be paid for. The audience was really engaged and asked great questions.
Luke Whitington, Deputy Chair of the NSW Labor Party Economic Policy Committee, found it “well-organized” but believes that all three features speakers overlooked one of the most important reasons to support UBI:
None of the speakers talked about deflation, either in relation to the specific term of falling prices, nor in relation to the more general term for a long term low growth period, as exemplified by Japan since the 90s and the world in the 30s, and in milder form, advanced economies since the 70s, compounded and accelerating now with financialisation and automation. That none of the panel speakers raised the necessity of basic income as a counter deflationary mechanism was a pity, especially as Yanis Varoufakis’ speech on the topic has been on YouTube for a number of months. They did, however, inform the audience on a wide range of ethical and economic issues that a BI would affect.
As Drummond pointed out, though, Whitington was eventually able to broach the issue of deflation himself, in response to issues raised by Tarrant. On Whitington’s view, based on his experience as an organizer in the Labor Party, the most politically viable approach to a UBI in Australia is to promote the policy as a counter-deflationary measure and to support its financing through a sovereign wealth fund. This, he notes, was not stressed by the pro-UBI speakers at the NSW Fabians event.
In Australia it would be much more difficult to argue that unemployment benefits be paid without any activity or eligibility tests (which Spies Butcher correctly pointed out would immediately improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people currently stuck in the welfare ‘safety’ net), than to set up a fund that collected mineral or other revenue and distributed it equally to all citizens as a dividend.
Douglas Maclaine-Cross, who has previously worked with Whitington to promote UBI, also attended the event. Maclaine-Cross was struck by the apparent level of agreement: “Generally nobody seemed to object to the policy [UBI]; on the contrary it seemed that most people were very keen on it”:
[P]eople generally agreed that it could be afforded though it would of course mean raising more revenue. The estimates and suggested amounts involved a more generous payment than I was thinking of, which I took as a positive sign. …
From the floor there was a plea on commercial grounds from a libertarian. There were a few very positive and inspiring comments. I heard the word utopia mentioned a few times. There seemed to be a consensus from the audience that growing inequality was a very real problem and needed to be addressed somehow. So perhaps it was a case of preaching to the choir. However having made the case to people from a broad spectrum of politics myself, there is a chance for bipartisan support; so I have very high hopes for the policy in Australia.
by Guest Contributor | Sep 21, 2016 | Opinion
Evidence indicates that Universal Basic Income (UBI) policies would benefit our society’s least fortunate, decreasing poverty and improving the prospects for long-term income mobility. However, one UBI critic has asserted that a basic income replacing current forms of welfare would make it harder for immigrants to become naturalized citizens of the United States because of political pressures. An excerpt from an interview journalist Megan McArdle gave to PBS News Hour:
A lot of immigrants are low-wage workers. They’re not skilled, a lot of them. They don’t have as much education as most Americans and so they never do get up to the point where they would ever pay enough in taxes to make back that check. Even if you just limited it to their children, the political support for importing people whose children will then be entitled to the same $15,000 a year as your children — I don’t think that would ever be politically viable.
So if you want to have a guaranteed minimum income, you need to shut down, pretty much effectively, shut down immigration, or at least immigration from lower skilled countries…
There are three reasons why McArdle’s conclusion, that UBI would complicate the immigration debate and necessitate an end to immigration, is very incorrect. First, naturalized immigrants are already the recipients of welfare transfers in the status quo; distributing this aid through a UBI will lower administrative costs, be less controlling, and help those in poverty more than existing welfare policies do. Second, the UBI’s political effects on immigration are largely unpredictable, but the reform could be sold to the public in a bipartisan fashion. It is not hard to imagine that UBI would have broad appeal if constituents knew it offered a simplified benefit structure, created clear incentives for legal immigration, and eliminated some of the perverse incentives embedded in current welfare policies.
Welfare policies already exist – and naturalized immigrants already participate in these programs at relatively high rates because immigrants are more likely to be low-income than the average American citizen. This is worth repeating for emphasis: naturalized are already eligible to receive social security benefits, Supplemental Security Income, food stamps, TANF benefits, and benefits from other transfer programs. This fact alone means that UBI, as a phased-in alternative to current welfare policies, would not increase the amount of money transferred to naturalized immigrants.
While it is feasible that welfare transfers to new citizens could be viewed as unpopular, the balanced approach of a UBI could help mitigate these concerns while leaving everyone better off. Policymakers who answer to constituents with negative views on immigration could effectively communicate that a UBI would reduce the total cost of welfare by reducing administrative costs. Policymakers who answer to constituents with positive views on immigration could argue aid would be given to those in need in a better way, a way that empowers new immigrants to make their own choices rather than choices dictated by the government.
Depending on implementation, a UBI policy may slightly increase or decrease aid to the families of illegal immigrants. Although immigrants illegally residing in the U.S. are generally ineligible to receive welfare, illegal immigrants are permitted to apply to receive food stamps on their children’s behalf. A UBI equal to the value of the food stamps the family would have otherwise received should be the preferred policy. Various states already have their own forms of supplementary assistance for illegal immigrants in addition to food stamps: these states could bridge any perceived gaps by offering the same assistance they do now.
Lawful, non-citizen residents, such as students, exchange visitors and foreign workers, are eligible for certain welfare transfers depending on their circumstances. Current laws also require waiting periods and point systems for noncitizens to become eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) transfers. These rules could be maintained to alleviate concerns that noncitizens would take advantage of the UBI: as it stands now, non-citizens receive substantially less welfare transfers than their citizen counterparts. Essentially, a UBI would end up looking very similar to the SSI – the general idea would be to have fewer onerous requirements on how welfare dollars are spent.
The political implications of UBI implementation are nearly impossible to predict, especially in the context of immigration. For example, even though illegal immigration has been falling over the last decade, voter concern is relatively high. Additional demographic changes will likely change the political realities surrounding immigration reform and welfare policies.
It is also unlikely that a UBI would drastically change the rate of naturalization or where non-citizens choose to call home. After all, research shows that welfare spending does not have large effect on immigrants’ decisions on where to live (the biggest factor appears to be economic opportunity). It also appears that citizenship fees are a bigger factor in determining whether immigrants will pursue naturalization than welfare is.
It is clear that UBI would not lead to the cataclysmic outcomes McArdle expects: we would have already seen those consequences with current welfare policies. A UBI would just improve the existing system.
About the author:
James Davis is an undergraduate at Columbia University studying Economics and History.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 18, 2016 | Opinion
(image credit to: The Economist)
IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) Deputy Director for Capacity Development Andrew Berg, Research Department Senior Economist (at IMF) Luis-Felipe Zanna and Edward Buffie, a Professor of Economics at Indiana University Bloomington, just published an article articulating an analysis revolving around technological development and its implications on society, particularly regarding labor, capital and (in)equality. At the end of the article they refer to basic income as a possible solution, in order to redistribute the excess capital brought by the computerization of production.
But what do we have here? A miracle conversion of hard-core capitalist economists into soft-hearted left-wing liberals? Can we, after all, turn lead into gold? No, of course not. What we have here is textbook capitalist economy, with a new ingredient: basic income.
So their logic goes like this: We have inequality, but that is fine. Inequality is merely a result of market forces; we can live with that because we belong to that fortunate group of people who have not experienced poverty and cannot imagine experiencing poverty. But there are a couple of challenges with too much inequality: people revolt and cannot buy all these wonderful things corporate capitalism churns out daily. You see, this humanity thing has one big problem: it is full of humans. And humans, unlike machines, have two amazing features, which these brilliant economists have just discovered: they tend to fight back if pressed too much and cannot survive without their basic needs met.
The reason for this sudden, latent, realization has to do with the one thing all capitalists share: they are not entirely human. They hold this strange belief that there’s nothing wrong with trying to extract more water from the well than the amount that exists there. It is like writing a three-thousand-page essay and drawing this sole conclusion: 1+1=3.
But back to the logic. So, inequality is tolerable, but not too much. The solution? Give these poor people a basic income and, all of a sudden, they stop being such bad loser crying babies and resume buying enough stuff to maintain this completely absurd system of domination, privilege and exploitation. Shut them up, so we can keep doing our thing without distraction. Note that I have not, until now, said a single thing about robots, computers or automation. Because at bottom it has nothing to do with that. With robots or not, the capitalist mind just wants to extract wealth. How they do it is irrelevant, or relevant only to the extent as it is efficient in doing so.
What these enlightened IMF economists, and possibly other IMF officials do not realize is that basic income is a complete game changer. It will allow people to say “no”, to enjoy enough freedom to completely turn the capitalist system on its head. And these people will start doing much more bizarre things, like volunteering for causes close to their heart, or starting their own businesses (refusing to be slaves to some capitalist boss), and enjoying more leisure time, and time to care for family and friends (go figure out why). Living out their own lives, for a change.
I predict that, after basic income is implemented, in part following up these economists’ recommendations, capitalism will hardly resemble its own shadow in 10 to 20 years. Society will barely recognize itself, when looking back at today’s world. Mark my words.
More information at:
Andrew Berg, Edward F. Bufie and Luis-Felipe Zanna, “Robots, Growth, and Inequality”, Finance & Development, vol. 53 nº3, September 2016
by Kate McFarland | Sep 16, 2016 | News
BIEN cofounder Philippe van Parijs (Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain) delivered a TEDx talk on basic income earlier in the year. A video of the talk is now available online.
Van Parijs’ talk, “The Instrument of Freedom”, was organized as part of a TEDx event called “Bits of Love”, held in Ghent, Belgium on June 18, 2016. The topics discussed at the event were not restricted to basic income or even political and economic issues. Titles and themes of other talks range from “Why We Don’t Need Oil for Plastics” to “How Farm Dust Protects from Allergies” to “My Secret Ingredient for Classical Musicians: Stage Presence” — and many more.
In his talk, which he frames as a critique of the goal of continuous growth, Van Parijs recounts the worries that led him to conceive of basic income as a better alternative to “capitalism as we know it”, and describes how basic income is an essential part of a society that delivers “real freedom for all”:
For more information about the surrounding TEDx event, see the “Bits of Love” page at the TEDxGhent website.
TEDx Talks, “The instrument of freedom | Philippe Van Parijs | TEDxGhent“, YouTube; uploaded August 18, 2016.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Philippe van Parijs photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Bibliotheek Kortrijk
This basic income news made possible in part by Kate’s supporters on Patreon
