by Karl Widerquist | Nov 25, 2012 | News
Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress: Basic Income and Economic Citizenship
Thursday May 9th to Saturday May 11th, 2013
Sheraton Hotel and Towers, New York City
The Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Congress, Basic Income and Economic Citizenship, will take place in New York City on Thursday, May 9th through Saturday, May 11th, 2013. The congress is organized by the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in cooperation with the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN/RCRG), and will be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA). Attendees at the North American Basic Income Congress are welcome to attend any of the EEA’s events.
Featured speakers include Carole Pateman, UCLA and Cardiff University, co-author of Basic Income Worldwide: Horizons of Reform; Sheri Berman, Barnard College, author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century; Jurgen De Wispelaere, University of Montréal, co-editor of The Ethics of Stakeholding; David Casassas, University of Barcelona, co-editor of Basic Income in the Age of Great Inequalities; James Riccio, MDRC, co-author of “Toward Reduced Poverty Across Generations: Early Findings from New York City’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program;” Darrick Hamilton, The New School, co-author of “Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?” and Evelyn Forget, University of Manitoba, author of “The Town with No Poverty: A history of the North American Guaranteed Annual Income Social Experiments.”
All points of view are welcome, and proposals from any discipline are invited. For more information see the call for papers at: www.usbig.net.
Or contact the congress organizer, Almaz Zelleke of USBIG, at azelleke@gmail.com.
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: November 30th, 2012
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 30, 2012 | News
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
Basic Income and Economic Citizenship
Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress
Thursday May 9th to Saturday May 11th, 2013
Sheraton Hotel and Towers, New York City
The Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Congress, Basic Income and Economic Citizenship, will take place in New York City on Thursday, May 9th through Saturday, May 11th, 2013. The congress is organized by the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in cooperation with the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN/RCRG), and will be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA). Attendees at the North American Basic Income Congress are welcome to attend any of the EEA’s events.
The North American Basic Income Congress (NABIG Congress) was originally the USBIG Congress, and was organized by the USBIG Network. It became a joint event of the USBIG Network and BICN/RCRG in 2010. Since then, it has been a NABIG Congress held on alternate years in the United States and Canada. Previous NABIG congresses have been held in Montréal, Toronto, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Featured speakers of this year’s NABIG Congress include Sheri Berman, Barnard College, author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century; and Jurgen De Wispelaere, University of Montréal, co-editor of The Ethics of Stakeholding.
USBIG and BICN/RCRG promote discussion and research on the idea of a basic income—an unconditional guaranteed minimum income that provides a basic but decent standard of living to all. Scholars, activists, and others are invited to propose papers and organize panel discussions on the basic income guarantee or other topics related to poverty and the distribution of wealth and income, including but not limited to:
- strengthening economic citizenship through universal grants and other measures;
- democratizing the economy through budget, tax, and labor market reform;
- building consensus around measures that promote equality;
- models and cost estimates for universal grants;
- issues of gender and the family;
- social justice;
- political prospects for universal grants in North America and around the world; and
- lessons from local pilots, programs, and initiatives.
All points of view are welcome, and proposals from any discipline are invited. To present a paper, organize a panel, or display a poster at the congress, submit a proposal to the congress organizer, Almaz Zelleke of USBIG, at azelleke@gmail.com.
Please include the following information with your proposal:
1. Name(s)
2. Affiliation(s)
3. Address
4. City, Province/State, Postal/Zip Code, and Country
5. Telephone
6. Email Address(es)
7. Paper/Presentation/Panel/Poster Title
8. Abstract or description of 50-150 words
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: November 30th, 2012
Proposals for panel discussions should include a title, topic, and description of the panel and the information above for each participant. If the participants in a panel discussion are not presenting formal papers, the title of the paper and abstract may be omitted. Panels should be limited to no more than four presentations.
REGISTRATION:
Attendees and presenters at the NABIG conference must register with EEA. USBIG participants, who are not economists, can register for $95, a discount of $60 off the regular price of $155. NA-BIG who are economists should become full members of the EEA and pay the full price. The EEA has set up a special online payment system.
For economists: https://eeaorg.myshopify.com/products/usbig-registration-academic
For non-economists: https://eeaorg.myshopify.com/products/usbig-registration-non-academic
MORE INFORMATION:
For updated information on featured speakers, registration, and accommodations as it becomes available, visit the USBIG website at www.usbig.net. For more information about the EEA Annual Meeting, visit the EEA website at https://www.ramapo.edu/eea/2013/.
by Citizens' Income Trust | May 29, 2012 | Opinion
Tony Fitzpatrick, Welfare Theory: An introduction to the theoretical debates in social policy, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, xvi + 241 pp, pbk 0 230 27202 6, £19.99
The map with which political philosophers and social theorists are concerned overlaps, to a considerable extent, with the particular territory occupied by social policy. This book starts from the premise that you cannot properly understand the one unless you understand the other. (p.xiv)
This accessible and thoroughly researched book is also a vindication of Fitzpatrick’s conviction that ‘welfare theory’ – the philosophy of social policy – is a discipline in its own right. Welfare theory draws on both ‘social theory (the philosophy of sociology and social science) and political theory (the philosophy of politics and government)’ (p.xv), but it orders things in its own way and develops its own emphases. It is not insignificant that the first chapter is entitled ‘wellbeing’, now a focal concept for welfare theorists and social policy makers.
The book is structured around a number of concepts: equality, liberty, citizenship, community, state, power, poverty, society, and class. Fitzpatrick explores the histories of these ideas, the different ways in which they have been understood, and ‘recent developments’. Throughout, there is reference to social policy. For instance: the National Health Service’s achievements are judged against a variety of definitions of equality (p.39), the distribution and redistribution of income is the field on which a discussion of the relationship between equality and liberty is constructed (ch.3), new forms of ‘deliberative democracy’ are related to the idea of ‘democracy’ (p.79), and the chapter on ‘state, power and poverty’ is largely driven by the history and current state of the UK’s welfare state, the detail of current social policy, and measured outcomes (ch.5). The first three of these relationships fit the three types of relationship which Fitzpatrick lists in his introduction: ‘assessment’ (of practice by theory), ‘explanation’ (of practice by theory), and ‘reform’ (of practice by theory). But we can see that there is also a fourth relationship: practical policy’s influence on welfare and its concepts. To take a particular example: Beveridge’s ‘contributory’ and ‘social assistance’ welfare state was largely driven by previous government-supported co-operative insurance provision and by the Elizabethan Poor Law. The real-world relationship between welfare theory and social policy is a circular one, with each affecting the other. Fitzpatrick’s book is a text-book for students ( – the first edition was written for that purpose, and this second edition has benefited from the first edition’s use for that purpose), so we would expect it to concentrate on the ‘welfare theory forms social policy’ side of the relationship; but in his ‘concluding remarks’ Fitzpatrick suggests that
it is often necessary to take social policy themes and issues into account when discussing social and political theory. Social policy students do not simply debate how to translate principles into practical reality. Instead, they ask distinctive questions that enhance the method and assumptions of social philosophy. To explore social and political thought without substantial reference to the battles fought over social policies is to miss a key feature in the development of modern societies. (p.211).
Following the chapters on particular concepts, chapter 7 is entitled ‘ideologies’. Here Fitzpatrick describes the Radical Right, Conservatism, Social Democracy, Marxism, and Feminism. (Descriptions of the first two and of Marxism are followed by ‘criticisms’; descriptions of social democracy and of feminism are not.)
Chapter 8 is on ‘identities’: a recognition that social policy is often driven by the ‘recognition’ of an ‘identity’ (for instance, disability). Chapter 9 is on ‘globalization’, and shows how a global economy constrains national social policy; and this chapter in particular shows how economic policy has influenced both the idea of globalization and changes in social policy. The final chapter, on ‘global justice and environmentalism’, is new to this edition, and contains a useful taxonomy of types of global justice.
Finally, Fitzpatrick suggests that the utopian and the pragmatist need each other. The truth of this in relation to our tax and benefits system is obvious. Maybe it’s time for a second edition of his Freedom and Security, his book about a Citizen’s Income: a book which exemplifies the complex relationship between welfare theory and social policy which the book under review is all about.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jul 30, 2011 | Research
In a new book, Guy Standing develops a theme that has underpinned his advocacy of a basic income since the 1980s. There are many rationales for supporting a basic income, but effective political pressure may emanate from the emergence of a new mass class, the precariat. It is a dangerous class; not yet a class-for-itself, in the Marxian sense, but a class-in-the-making, in which distinctive groups are torn politically in different directions.
Those in the precariat – and the millions who fear they could fall into it – are characterised by having insecure lives, in and out of short-term jobs, with volatile and generally low incomes. What stands out most is that they lack a secure occupational identity, and have no sense of control over their work, labour, recreation and leisure.
The relevance for basic income arises because the precariat’s economic insecurity is chronic and is mostly uninsurable. In a globalising market economy, the precariat faces systemic uncertainty and exposure to threatening hazards and shocks. Social insurance cannot provide basic economic security in such circumstances. But in any case governments have increasingly resorted to means-tested social assistance, ‘targeting’ on the so-called deserving poor. Even with tax credits, this has generated well-known poverty and unemployment traps, whereby those in the lower echelons of labour markets face marginal tax rates close to 100%, prompting moral and immoral hazards.
It has also led to a proliferation of precarity traps, whereby anybody losing a job or income must enter a debilitating process of trying to obtain state benefits, during which time they have no income and build up debts. If they do obtain benefits, they will be disinclined to take a temporary low-wage job in case they have to start the process all over again.
The precariat consists of three groups. First, there are progressives, mostly consisting of frustrated educated youth, intellectuals and others who resent the insecurity and lack of occupational opportunity. They embrace various non-conformist lifestyles. It is this group that has been filling the squares in protests against the austerity programmes that have followed the financial crisis. They reject old-style social democracy while looking for a redistributive strategy that would give people like themselves basic economic security in which to build their lives. They openly support a basic income, even if some have to be alerted to the feasibility of it.
The second group in the precariat is anomic, politically detached, including many morally defeated people, as well as migrants keen not to be noticed by the authorities, many of the so-called disabled and many who have been criminalised. This group could be mobilised to support a basic income, but would have to feel they were moving from a denizen status to citizens in order to feel it would be something for them.
The third component of the precariat is what makes it the dangerous class. It consists mainly of those falling from the old working class and the partially educated condemned to a life of insecurity. This disparate group listens to populist politicians offering variants of neo-fascism, a far-right agenda depicting government as against them and strangers, notably migrants, Muslims and ‘liberals’, as the cause of their insecurity.
The far-right is gaining ground in country after country, often at the expense of social democrats. The trouble is that the latter has not offered the precariat an attractive vision, and are paying the political price, deservedly. But here, paradoxically, there is reason for some optimism. Increasingly, we may see that those wishing to be centre-left politicians will have no alternative to offer other than a universal basic income, if they want to foster an economically secure citizenry and to reduce inequality.
That is why the book ends on a mildly optimistic note. However, it goes one stage further, which may be controversial for basic income supporters. The argument is that the commodification of politics combined with the growth of an increasingly angry and active precariat have accentuated the thinning of democracy and the erosion of deliberative democracy. In that context, it advocates a basic income in which every adult on establishing eligibility makes a moral commitment in writing – not a legally binding one – to vote in general elections and to attend at least one local public political meeting each year.
Strengthening deliberative democracy will surely be a vital part of a new progressive politics in which the precariat would feel an integral part of society. That is consistent with the values that have guided BIEN for the past twenty-five years.
Guy Standing, The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class, has just been published by Bloomsbury, and can be ordered online.
