by Stanislas Jourdan | Feb 4, 2016 | News
Long-time supporter of basic income François Blais has been appointed back as Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity and tasked to work on Guaranteed minimum income.
As a consequence of a ministerial reshuffle, François Blais has been displaced from the ministry of Education back to Québec’s Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity.
Blais had previously been appointed Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity after the April 2014 General Election in Canada’s province. One year ago he was appointed to the Ministry of Education.
“Minister François Blais will work on the improvement of our income support instruments in the direction of a guaranteed minimum income, a field in which he has strong expertise,” Québec’s Prime Minister Philippe Couillard explained in a statement to the press.
“I am serious about it” said Couillard in an interview. “We look at what other countries are doing like in Finland. I find the idea very seductive.”
“On the one hand it simplifies the State, on the other it maintains people’s dignity. The combinaison is excessively interesting.”
Blais is BIEN member since the 1990s. He investigated the concept while holding the post of Professor of Political Science at Laval University, Québec City. In 2002 he co-wrote a book entitled Ending Poverty: A Basic Income for All Canadians, and he reiterated his support for basic income when he joined the government in 2014.
“A perfect political storm”
The ministry reshuffle may indicate a change of direction for the liberal government led by Couillard. Blais’ predecessor Sam Hamad has been pushing a reform which would involve more sanctions to unemployed people who would refuse job opportunities. The bill has sparked a lot of criticism among anti-poverty group and leftist parties in Québec.
“It’s the perfect political storm and Quebec is in the unique position to lead what could be the most fundamental change in western social policy since the introduction of medicare.” comments Peter Wheeland on CultMontreal.com.
Blais’s reappointment however does not make unanimity. In particular, the Left-Independentist and pro-basic income party Québec Solidaire expressed its concerns with the return of Blais to the Ministry for Social Affairs. Blais himself was heavily criticized during his first mandate as Minister for pushing cuts in social benefits.
by Toru Yamamori | Nov 15, 2015 | Research
Richard Murphy and Howard Reed, ‘Financing the Social State: Towards a full employment economy‘ (pdf), the Centre for Labour and Social Studies, 2013.
Murphy and Reed recommend the implementation of an unconditional basic income in the U.K., in this policy paper. Murphy has been one of economic advisers for Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Labour Party.
by Karl Widerquist | Oct 2, 2015 | News
Official Department of Labor portrait of Robert Reich
Basic Income was a primary topic of discussion at the World Summit on Technological Unemployment at the Time Life Building in New York City on September 29th, 2015. Basic Income was endorsed at the event by leading economists and business people, including former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich; Nobel Laureate and Columbia economist, Joseph Stiglitz; principal software engineer for Tesla Motors, Gerald Huff; and several others.
The conference, a one-day event organized by the World Technology Network, was not directly about basic income. The main topic was the labor market effects of automation, but nearly all of the participants who discussed policy responses to automation endorsed basic income.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Most of the participants agreed that automation is a good thing with negative side effects. People lose their jobs; sometimes they can only find jobs and lower incomes; sometimes they do not find new jobs at all. At the rate at which jobs are being automated now many participants were concerned that the need for human labor in the production process is permanently declining. In a world where most people are dependent on their jobs for their livelihood, it can lead either to permanently lower wages or permanent unemployment.
Perhaps new technology will always create more demand for labor, but there is no law saying that it must. Harvard President, Lawrence Summers, mentioned the observation by the Nobel Prize winning economist, Wassily Leontief, “The role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors.”
Gerald Huff
For many of the participants, basic income was the obvious solution. If everyone received an unconditional cash income sufficient to meet their needs, everyone would share in the benefits of automation even if they were unable to find jobs in the new economy.
In addition to Reich, Stiglitz, and Huff, other speakers endorsing Basic Income at the conference included, James P. Clark, chair of the World Technology Network, who argued forcefully for basic income in his opening remarks; Scott Santens, a journalist for the Huffington post; Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots, James Hughes, a sociologist and bioethicist at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Although Lawrence Summers did not directly mention Basic Income, he spoke favorably about an open letter that was sent to Lyndon Johnson by “the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution” in 1964, and that letter recommended the guaranteed income as the best response to automation.
Several hundred people attended the conference. When the participants broke into small-groups for discussion, most of the groups spoke positively of basic income. Not all speakers mentioned basic income, but none of them attacked it. This overwhelming support for basic income is extremely unusual at any event other than a meeting of basic income supporters. The reason probably is that if the need for human labor really is going to decline, most of the reasons to oppose basic income are going to disappear.
For more information about the conference, go to:
James P. Clark
by Toby | Apr 2, 2015 | Research
The author argues that it’s desirable to attempt to eliminate work done only “for economic compulsion” via a Guaranteed Minimum income and addresses various objections.
John Bentley, “Full Unemployment“, Philorum, 2005 December 15
