by Kate McFarland | Jan 1, 2017 | News
As previously reported at Basic Income News, Finland’s University of Tampere held a course on basic income (“Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy”) during autumn semester. This is the third course on basic income offered by the university since the autumn of 2015.
Lectures from the course were recorded and published online by Alusta!, the webzine of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Tampere University. They are available to view on the “Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy” YouTube playlist.
Photo (Tampere, Finland) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Riku Kettunen
by Kate McFarland | Dec 11, 2016 | News
Since May 2016, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath has been conducting an ongoing project investigating the design, effects, and implementation of different universal basic income proposals for the UK.
The project, Examining the Case for a Basic Income, includes a series of lectures, workshops, and other events. Its most recent event was a public lecture by Citizen’s Income Trust Director Malcolm Torry on the state of the basic income debate.
The next event associated with the project, which will take place on Tuesday, December 13, is an academic-oriented workshop led by IPR Research Associate Luke Martinelli and Visiting Policy Fellow Jurgen De Wispelaere (also Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tampere). The goal of Tuesday’s workshop, Basic Income and the European Welfare State, is to “situate the feasibility and institutional ‘fit’ of different basic income schemes within the literatures of the comparative welfare state and comparative social policy”.
Taking as a starting point that European welfare states face common and diverse challenges (in terms of labour market, demographic and social changes that lead to new profiles of poverty and insecurity, for example), the aim of the session will be to consider the ways in which these challenges present both opportunities and difficulties for basic income as a policy solution, how these vary from country to country, and how different ‘varieties’ of basic income arise when we consider the political and institutional feasibility of schemes in specific contexts.
In addition to a presentation by Martinelli and De Wispelaere, the event will feature a talk by BIEN Co-Chair Louise Haagh (University of York), entitled “Basic Income, Welfare States and Institutional Change: Insights from Europe”, and a roundtable discussion highlighting the different perspectives on welfare state from five different countries. Roundtable participants include Haagh, representing Denmark; Fran Bennet (University of Oxford), representing the UK; Loek Groot (University of Utrecht), representing the Netherlands; Pertti Koistinen (University of Tampere), representing Finland; Jose A. Noguera (Autonomous University of Barcelona), representing Spain.
Each session will include a period of open discussion with the audience, which is expected to consist of academics with research interests or expertise in comparative welfare states.
Details about the Basic Income and the European Welfare State workshop are available here: https://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0264.html.
The IPR’s Examining the Case for a Basic Income project is planning more events for the future, as well as a release of papers for public distribution in spring 2017.
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Shawn Harquail
by Kate McFarland | Aug 22, 2016 | News
A recent episode of the Asia & The Pacific Policy Society’s Policy Forum podcast examined the benefits and costs of basic income.
In the episode, editor Martyn Pearce interviews a series of four experts on the topic: Guy Standing, economist at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and co-founder of Basic Income Earth Network; Charles Murray, W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Peter Whiteford, Director of the Social Policy Institute at the Australian National University; and Olli Kangas, researcher at KELA, the group planning Finland’s basic income experiment.
Guy Standing speaks about a multitude of issues, including the immediate need of a basic income to prevent the rise of “neo-fascist populists” and the justification of basic income as a type of public inheritance, which is owed to everyone due to the collective contributions of our forebears. Standing also describes possible models to introduce a basic income, such as beginning with a small social dividend alongside current welfare programs. Near the end of the interview, he provides an extended argument against the charge that a basic income “will make people lazy”.
Next, Charles Murray delivers quite different views on why a basic income is necessary and what a model of basic income should look like. Murray stresses that, on his proposal, a basic income “would replace the entire welfare state; it would not be an add-on” — and that the amount would be low enough that no individual could live alone in “splendid isolation”, encouraging employment and cooperation (combining resources).
Peter Whiteford, the third interviewee, briefly overviews the popularity of the idea of basic income in Australia, before turning to address two major arguments against basic income: that it is too expensive and that it would discourage (paid) work.
Finally, Olli Kangas discusses many details related to Finland’s upcoming basic income experiment — including Finland’s decision to test only a partial basic income, the structure of the experiment, and what is being tested (spoiler: primarily the effects on employment).
Listen to the full episode here:
Martyn Pearce and Peter Whiteford, “A basic income, or the end of welfare?” Asia & The Pacific Policy Society, Policy Forum; July 15, 2016.
Photo CC Slilin
by Kate McFarland | Jul 29, 2016 | News
Ursula Huws, Professor of Labour and Globalisation at University of Hertfordshire, calls for a guaranteed minimum income in a recent article in The Conversation:
[N]either 19th-century values nor 20th-century structures are fit for purpose in the fluid, just-in-time conditions of 21st-century labour markets and an unpredictable, digital, globalised economy.
We should go back to the drawing board and develop a system that provides basic security and dignity for all while still allowing for work to be organised flexibly. One possible solution is to give everybody a basic income. … This would raise the standard of living and reduce poverty among the most vulnerable, but would also allow workers to move flexibly in and out of paid work, education and care work without being subjected to the expensive, demeaning and dysfunctional inquisitorial procedures of the current benefits system that sees only the largely exclusionary categories of “work” and “claiming benefits”.
She acknowledges, though, that a basic income is not a panacea, and would have to be combined with other reforms.
Huws currently directs research projects which receive funding from the COST Association, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies and UNI-Europa (the European Service Workers Union), and she serves as editor of the international interdisciplinary journal Work Organisation Labour and Globalisation.
She is also a trustee of the Citizen’s Income Trust, a UK-based group that advocates for a basic income an occasionally contributes to Basic Income News.
Ursula Huws, “The way we work is changing, but the welfare state hasn’t kept pace with the times“, The Conversation, 23 June 2016.
by Karl Widerquist | May 5, 2016 | Research
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of a social experiment from the 1970s called the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (Mincome). I examine Mincome’s “saturation” site located in Dauphin, Manitoba, where all town residents were eligible for guaranteed annual income payments for three years. Drawing on archived qualitative participant accounts I show that the design and framing of Mincome led participants to view payments through a pragmatic lens, rather than the moralistic lens through which welfare is viewed. Consistent with prior theory, this paper finds that Mincome participation did not produce social stigma. More broadly, this paper bears on the feasibility of alternative forms of socioeconomic organization through a consideration of the moral aspects of economic policy. The social meaning of Mincome was sufficiently powerful that even participants with particularly negative attitudes toward government assistance felt able to collect Mincome payments without a sense of contradiction. By obscuring the distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, universalistic income maintenance programs may weaken social stigmatization and strengthen program sustainability.
David Calnitsky, “‘More Normal than Welfare’: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience,” Canadian Review of Sociology 53, no. 1, pages 26–71, February 2016
