by Claire Bott | Jun 26, 2018 | News
The Next System Podcast, which states that it “seeks to understand contemporary challenges, interrogate emerging possibilities, and begin imagining the next system”, recently interviewed Jeremiah Lowery and Camila Thorndyke of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network about their “Put a Price on it, D.C.” campaign. This campaign aims to institute a local carbon tax on dirty energy sources and redistribute the money raised largely via regular payments to residents, thus creating a local universal basic income (UBI).
Thorndyke says, “we’ve chosen to go with the most progressive revenue allocation possible”, explaining that, as the tax would mean a rise in energy prices, failing to pass on the money to residents would mean that “we’d be trying to solve the climate crisis off the backs of the poor”. Lowery adds, “increasing inequality actually leads to more devastation and more climate change”.
The podcast can be accessed here.
More information at:
The Next System Project webpage
The Next System Podcast “Episode 3: Carbon tax & Social Dividends w/ Jeremiah Lowery & Camila Thorndike” information and transcript
Edited by: Caroline Pearce
by Andre Coelho | Jun 24, 2018 | News
The Global Unification International (GUI) is a “sustainable development think tank”, striving for the integration of technologies and social policies between all stakeholders – corporate, government and third sector organizations – in emerging economies. Founded in 2006 and with headquarters in Queensland, Australia, it promotes “specialized programs focusing on justice, equality, peace, health, education, sustainable development, technology transfer and the eradication of poverty”. For that purpose, GUI is based on a Constitution, which sole purpose is to “advancing humanity for the continued evolution of co-operation”.
The GUI has a commitment to “design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the Universal Basic Income Project”, and its strong social media presence (a 79000 follower page on Facebook) regularly refers actual statements from people receiving basic income (e.g.: from GiveDirectly’s experiments in Kenya). The think-tank also produces research articles and other knowledge-based media, through its publications page, where basic income has also been featured. A wide variety of experts, mainly from but not limited to African countries, cover aspects such as health, social policy and IT/computer science.
More information at:
GUI website
GUI Facebook page
by Kate McFarland | Jun 9, 2018 | News
“An Intellectual History of Basic Income”
University of Cambridge – January 14, 2019
A team of three University of Cambridge scholars have released a Call for Papers (CFP) for a conference on the history of the idea of basic income, to be held at the university on January 14, 2019.
Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) co-founder Philippe van Parijs is scheduled speak at the closing event. Other invited speakers are to be confirmed.
The conference, titled “An Intellectual History of Basic Income,” is being organized by Daniel Zamora (Department of Sociology), Peter Sloman (Department of Politics and International Studies), and Pedro Ramos Pinto (Faculty of History). Zamora is currently co-authoring a book (with Cambridge PhD candidate Anton Jäger) on the intellectual history of basic income with a focus on the US and continental Europe. Sloman is meanwhile writing a book on the history of the concept in the UK, and recently published an article in the Journal of Social Policy on the idea in the last century of British politics.
As described in the CFP, the interdisciplinary conference will investigate the “story of how the basic income proposal has achieved global prominence,” with a specific focus on “the contemporary history of basic income from the 1960s to the present,” including “how UBI proposals have been developed and received in different ideological and political contexts, and the ways in which the concept has been shaped by changing attitudes to welfare provision, income inequality, and the future of work.” It will also explore “how an idea that emerged as a response to a specific situation in industrialized countries in the 1960s and 70s has become an important tool for rethinking development policy in the global South,” alongside broader themes related to changing conceptions of global poverty.
The organizers invite abstracts for papers on the above themes (to be submitted by September 1, 2018). Selected authors will be invited to develop their conference papers into full chapters for an edited volume to be published with an academic press.
For more details, including submission guidelines, see: https://inequalityandhistory.blogspot.com/2018/05/call-for-papers-intellectual-history-of.html.
Reviewed by Patrick Hoare.
Photo: Founding meeting of BIEN.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Zamora, Sloman, and Jäger are coauthoring a single book; this has been corrected.
by Guest Contributor | May 26, 2018 | News
Scott Santens published on Medium the transcription of a speech he wrote for a keynote session he presented in Sweden in 2017, with the title “It’s time for technology to serve all humankind with Unconditional Basic Income.”
The speech revolves around the impact of automation on society, acting as a disruptor in the labour market, making many jobs obsolete without creating more and better jobs for humans. This is a trend that goes on since the ‘90s: “Yes, it already happened. It’s not in the future. It’s in the past”.
Technological unemployment is a reality, he says, and it’s observable from the decline in occupation of the US population since 2000, the year in wich human labour peaked. Ephemeralization made a lot of middle-skilled jobs obsolete, creating an occupational vacuum filled by low-skilled jobs, as jobs are automated “from the middle out”. This translated in income stagnation for the middle class, growth in incomes monthly variance and rising income inequality. All factors which ultimately affect the wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole, producing a costant sense of insecurity in the population. But, according to Santens, we shouldn’t fear automation:
“We have the opportunity to forever free humanity from drudgery and toil, but as long as people require money to live, and jobs are the primary way of obtaining money, people will fear automation.”
Technologic unemployment ends up hindering productivity itself, because automation of the medium skilled jobs makes workers shift toward the low skilled ones, increasing the offer of low paid work and thus making automation less convenient and postponable.The answer resides in decoupling work from income, through the introduction of an Unconditional Basic Income, a solution which would make income circulate from top to bottom. It would eliminate the necessity to work in order to survive, thus driving very many undesirable jobs out of the labour market and making automation more impellent. With a better distribution of wealth, full automation could be reached, eliminating many unnecessarry and unsatisfactory jobs, and society would be ultimately able to floursih. Scott Santens puts this clearly:
“…how much are we holding civilization back by allowing impoverishment to continue? How much more could we accomplish as a species, if we made the choice, that’s right, THE CHOICE, to abolish poverty and extreme inequality forever, by simply investing in humanity — in each other?”
More information at:
Scott Santens, “It’s Time for Technology to Serve all Humankind with Unconditional Basic Income”, Medium, April 13th 2018
by Andre Coelho | May 24, 2018 | News
Next week – 1 through the 3rd of June – Universal Basic Income Europe (UBIE) activists will be at the EYE2018 event, in Strasbourg. This event is an annual gathering of young Europeans at the European Parliament premises. There, they “come up with ideas for the future of Europe”, “discuss with European decision makers”, and join/meet other interested young people around Europe.
In an attempt to fuel the debate around basic income, UBIE aims at having 20 participants from 10 nationalities, at the EYE2018. There will be activities centered around equality/inequality (named “rich and poor”) and basic income will be discussed, at least, at a roundtable named “Basic Income: Return of Robin Hood?”. This roundtable, happening on Friday, at 11h am, will be organized by the European Parliament and will feature Harro Boven (Economist, Young Democrats (The Netherlands)), Aurèlei Hampel (UBIE), Ilkka Kaukoranta and Daniel Zamora, moderated by Petra Prešeren (RTV Slovenija).
Other event themes are:
- Young and old: keeping up with the digital revolution
- Apart and together: working out for a stronger Europe
- Safe and Dangerous: Staying alive in turbulent times
- Local and Global: protecting our planet
The event’s full programme can be found here.
More information at:
UBIE website
European Parliament, European Youth Event website
